


Ashes

by Corvixa



Series: It's All Gold [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amorality, Angst, BAMF Harley Keener, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Everyone Has Issues, Flashbacks, Fragmented Thoughts, Harley Keener Needs a Hug, Harley and his Insults, Hurt Harley Keener, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), Hydra Experimental Asset Program, Lost Memories, M/M, Not Captain America Friendly, Not Steve Friendly, OC-Dax, OC-Snipe, Poor Harley, Protective Harley Keener, Protective Tony Stark, Songs, The Charnel House, Tony Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony is Angry (At Steve), fractured mind, lyrics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:21:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 37,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29550630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvixa/pseuds/Corvixa
Summary: In a way, he knew it was time to set things in motion.In a way, he also knew that years of planning can fail.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Series: It's All Gold [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1595728
Comments: 40
Kudos: 101





	1. Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Well, that's the thing with dark and light. Depends on your point of view. In the end, you do what you can to protect those you love."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  __  
> I have a beta now! Which is good, cause you know, Dyslexic woman with nerve damage typing on a phone during extreme bouts of Insomnia might have spawned this series, but I always miss things. So having someone go through this and help me out, awesome. They also got to read everything first, even before my husband, who has to wait for each chapter like everyone else xD, so, everyone leave a big thanks to[AdrasteiaW.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdrasteiaW/pseuds/AdrasteiaW)  
> Sorry, this took so long to get up. I got a bit adventurous with the formatting (I really hope this looks good on a PC.) Then I had a taxi door slam on my arm, something I am still mad at tbh. 
> 
> However! We are finally up and running, people!
> 
> Welcome back to Gold's Universe.

* * *

_There's a man in a world of pain_

_Can you hear it in the air_

_And the words he breathes_

_Just a man nothing more, nothing less_

_But none the less, lived his life with every drop he bleeds_

_But let me take you on a journey_

_Times of torment, times of pain_

_Where the history it rolls_

_The clocks they never change_

_He's lived his life the best he knows_

_Which always goes to show_

_You and I were not the one and the same..._

* * *

**-Tony POV-**

_Mechanic._

_There's fire deep in my soul_

That word burned within his mind, part of him wanted to rage; there was just too much, too much energy, his magic was screaming at him to be freed again, but Gold was not a feckless magician that leaked magic whenever his emotions ran on high. Tony had always been in control, even when it looked as if he had lost it. That he had already lost control and destroyed the penthouse once? That was bad enough. He certainly wasn't going to do it again, not after someone put it back together for him in his absence. It was bad enough he lost control of his magic during a fracture; he certainly wasn't going to let go _now._ Not where there were people around him; if he let his magic slip its leash this time, it would be people who would suffer, not furniture.

_~~Mechanic~~._

_I'ma rise up like the legends of old_

As they entered the penthouse, he gave in to the constant push he had felt on the way back to call Pepper. He was at least 70% sure he wouldn't accidentally fry his phone by now, and he needed some answers. He needed something to focus on other than his magic burning up under his skin, and that _need_ to make someone suffer for what had come to pass. Pepper picked up quickly, and he knew he was being rude, but he needed to understand how this happened.

"Pepper, you told me Harley was _safe!"_

_**Mechanic**._

_A flame that would never retire._

"He is safe. He's in England." 

Safe? Maybe he was safe now, but Harley had been through hell when Tony had been _assured_ he was safe.

~~**_Mechanic_ ** ~~

_A pyre that would drive you insane_

Tony looked up from the phone and the perplexed image of Pepper to have eyes on Silver, who was practically prowling around the newly rebuilt penthouse. Dax and Siles had been busy while they'd been away, even the floor had been replaced, he noted, and he could barely pick up scent trails that anyone had been here. 

The patterns Silver was moving in were achingly familiar, the way Silver moved, how he was checking the security... it was in an almost identical way to himself when he had first come here. Silver followed the path he'd taken practically identically. The only reason it was slightly different was that the penthouse had changed since then. 

_Watch it fall_

Tony had thought he would never see Silver's patterns again. That they were lost to time and the depths of Hydra's hell house. That he would never _see_ them at all, only know them with his other senses. His mind remembered them in startling clarity, but then peoples patterns were something The Operative was just as interested in as Gold. Know a man's patterns as intimately as Gold learned his families and Gold could help them grow, become more practised, lethal and powerful. The Operative saw them as a guide to do whatever his mission stated. Tony brought those sides together in a way; they became familiarity and comfort. If he knew how to take someone down, he could help them cover those spots. Either way, Silver's patterns were some of the most ingrained patterns in his mind; he had never expected to _see_ them.

_Set the world on fire_

The edges of his mind were still lit up in blinding pathways of gold, and it was like his mind was trying to tell him something, but he couldn't work out what it was. He was missing data, and it left him on edge. The patterns were what he clung to right now, how Silver walked and picked his path across the penthouse, how he assessed people who came near him, how he didn't stray far from him. His Soldier's patterns were similar in some ways but blindingly different in others. Bright silver traded for midnight black as he stalked around the group, herding his family so he could keep them safe. Concern coloured both their steps, they both knew his mind wasn't entirely there right now, and it was likely that they could feel that his magic was boiling under the surface, just looking for an _excuse._

_Burn it to the ground_

It didn't help matters that there were _too many_ songs pushing in his head for attention; all he wanted to do was _burn._ The memories attached to them were out of reach, and the music couldn't play anything other than disjointed bars. Fragmented, fractured. The story of his life. He knew it was better than the silence, however. 

_Ghosts and devils come calling_

It was rare, but Tony knew there were times when the songs shut down, leaving him in the silence of his mind. He would take the shattered fire over that any day.

"He's not in England." 

_Calling my name out, lost in the fire_

Silver looked up at the mention of England, and Tony knew somehow this was partially from his own actions, as he had the same _feel_ as he did when he pulled shit in the Charnel House. Plus, even now, so close to a fracture, Tony _remembers_ The Kid. If Tony had been less careful in his life and he'd ended up actually having a kid, he bets it would have been Harley. He wondered if it had been him in Silver's memories. He had remembered a father. 

_Lost_

Bit of a dick. But he liked him that way. 

_In_

Yeah, he could imagine that being him; he didn't know if that was hopeful thinking, though. 

_The_

Maybe Harley had another father figure he didn't know about. 

_Fire_

He _wished_ he hadn't listened to Pepper and Rhodey when he remembered Harley.

_F̸̡̢̛̮̼̩̦̮̘̼̗̞͎͊̋̄̊̆̎̿̓̈́͠͝I̵̫͖͉̣͖̎͆̑R̶̤̦̉͐̋͑͒Ë̵͉̯̩̜͎̹͈̯́̒̉̔͛̿̈́̈́̒̕ͅ_   
_̶̢̩̫̫̟́͆_

It had been flashes when he was hunting Hydra. Like Peter, his mind had buried Harley deep, deep enough that it took time before Tony found him again.

_Now I'm g̷o̸n̸e̸, now I'm g̶̞̽̿̌o̴̰͗̂͆̀n̷͈̾̏e̴̗̯̟͚͌, now I'm g̷̤͎̫̔͌̀̎͜o̶͎͎̞̪̤̮͐̐̈͜ͅͅn̶͍̔̓̀̈̈͑͂e̷̡̱̰͚̙̩̰͈̒̆̇̂̈́̕͠  
_

Harley was a baseline human. They'd been worried Tony could accidentally hurt him, so Pepper had suggested keeping them apart until Tony had been more _stable._

_Ḡ̴̡̥̬͓͕̳̤͍̻̱̝͖̜̔̓͐̐̍́̈́̑̈́͠_

Plus, Harley had been on minimal contact for years. 

_Ǫ̴̤̣̞̗̙̯̅̂̌̀_

He _should_ have _pushed_. Tony had been nervous, not knowing what the kid would think, would he want nothing to do with him? So Tony had left Harley to his life in England, not wanting to _upset_ what the kid had built.

 _N̵̡̙̮͒̊̈́̓͂̋͗_

If he squinted, he could see the resemblance. The Charnel House didn't just leave marks in their minds, their memories or in their new abilities. It changed them physically too. Tony was still quite recognisable if one knew where to look; his height had remained static, he had lost decades and whilst he had put on significant muscle, it was nothing like Steve. It was the age drop that had let him fly under the radar with some people.

_E̶̥͙̼͖̥͇̦̖̺̤̻̅͒̽̓̆̆̈́͑̿͋̿̚̕͠͝_

The serum that Silver had got had changed him, and Tony was still pretty sure it had come from him rather than the Weasels stock. Silver had turned up in his first year at the Charnel House, but the Weasel had thrown virtually everything in his arsenal at him with the hope that _something_ would stick, well, in the hope that _something_ would kill him. His genetics, leftover Extremis and traces of Starkanium in his blood seemed to just keep him ticking. Tony's current idea was that if they used him to modify Silver? Then Silver was one of the few living examples of a person who should be dead. It also means there were a few variants of the super-soldier serum in his blood, where Tony had put on mass but remained short, Silver had shot up. The kid was already turning out to be tall before all of this happened.

_Deep in the woods, there's still a fire_

They were both underestimated. Silver being so gangly, people forgot his _reach. G_ old was shorter, but wicked fast and hard to catch. Both packed a punch to rival any super-soldier. 

_F̶̣̜͐̓͜ḭ̵̝̎ŕ̴͙̘̖̅ě̴̝͇̈́_

_Harley_ was still there, but he was _Silver_ too. Tony's brain _hurt_ just trying to put it all together; he knew he was pushing too fast. He knew pushing too hard after a fracture wouldn't help; it would just hurt. Yet, he couldn't seem to stop.

_That will never grow weary or tired_

"He is. I have a tracker on his phone." 

_And draws closer..._

As if Harley couldn't bypass a tracker. Even Tony hadn't been able to stop the kid when he got an idea in his head. Pepper had no chance.

c l o ̷͎̘̗̟͊F̸̢̡̢̒ s ̵̹̯͎͈̅̚͝I̷̻̒͗͘ e R̵̢͍̩͋̉ r ̸̪̬͇̞́̎͐Ë̸̢͖̲͖͔͋

̵̘̬̻̙̖̯͒̏̀͐̌͝

The amount of times Harley had travelled to him, somehow, without anyone wondering when an 11, 12, 13, 14 year old was travelling to New York on his own… one time the kid turned up in Italy!

 _c̵̦̉l̸̥̮̦̰͋̏̒̆ò̴̢̘̤̓̈́̕s̷̫̝͌͗̓ë̷̢̨̻̮̘́ṛ̵̦̃̾.̸̖̇.̶͓͋̕. .̷̭̱̔̅̊̎_  
 _̸̥̊c̶̺͖̊̍̈̄̓͜ḻ̴̜̞̟̅̐̿õ̶͈̙̙̙ŝ̷̲̘̝̩̎͗̓ę̴̳̰͛̃̏̾ͅŗ̸̀.̷̛ͅ_ _̵͕̫͙͒̂̇͛_

Looking like a drowned rat and sitting on his hotel bed _,_ somehow getting through security and into his suite. Tony hadn't complained; that trip had been dull, showing the kid around his old haunts was nice after he called his mom up to say he was safe.

_...and closer..._

The kid followed him. It was what he did.

_...each day_

This time he followed him right into the fire. When Tony hadn't had enough pieces to recognise him, let alone help him.

_̶̛̘̺̺̆Ĝ̶̯̺̻̾̎͑̓̄î̸̧͈̰̿͌͂̑̕v̴̢̤͔̼̞͈̓̇̏͠ę̸̨̭͓̌͊̓_

_Give yourself to me..._

_m̷̨̡̝̩͖̱̭̼̻͓̞̜̱̜̪̤̦͙̳̳͈̞͕̈́̿͐͂͑͑̓̐̑͠͠ ë̴̡̡̧̨̨̛̖̳̫͈̼̮̥̣͕͕̠̠̩̹̪͚͉̣͎́̇̄̈̍̄̾̐̊̂̏̒͒̏̓̌̚̚͝͝  
̸͙̺̠̆̐̓̍̂͗̌̈́͛̈̈́̍̑̊̆̆̚͘͝͝_

Tony carried a lot of pain from his time in the Charnel House, people he killed that didn't deserve it, people he protected that deserved to die. Weapons that came from his hands, his mind and into the hands of snakes. Yet this? _This_ was like fire.

_Throwing flames_

That a kid followed him.

_b̵̛̪͑͗̅͛̍̇͑͌̊̽͝ü̵̜̭̱͍̆͂͜͠⎊r̷̢̜̲̺̗̦͎̬̦̝̟̜͒̽͆̃̑͛̂̽̉͑̋̍̓̔̾̍̓̐͘͘͝͠͝ͅñ̴̢̧̛̖͙͖̳̪͈̝̻͑̈̌̿̈̇̌̍̆̓̎̎͐̒̕̕͝͝͠_   
_̸̢̘̖̦͖̻͓̻̹̖͉͇̭̭̭̙̫͍̻̼̥̹̦̳̤̝͍̩̺̽̈̄̀͆́̈́̎̔̀̈́̄̈́̾̉̽_

_'Till we **burn** it down_

_b̵̹̺͒̌ṳ̶̖͆r̴̪̤̀͊n̵̬̾_

That he failed to protect him. 

_In the mud_

That was what was making him burn.

_Ţ̸̨̛̩̻̞̮̰̳̗̤̥͍̇̑̑͌͘͝ŏ̸̡͔̼͍͔͕̣̻͈͙̝̜̯̃̍̕͜͝ ̸͚̻͊͆͆̇̽̓͐̚̚͝͠a̴̜͕̬̫̳̖̞̲̹̤̤͈̹͙̼̘̻͑͊̐̋̅̓͛̅̌̊͆̄̽̓͋̕s̶̨̡̞̖̖̤̭̺̃̋͛̕̕h̵̩̙͎̓̌̂͐̾͆̈́̆͗̈́́̏̒̈́͠͝_

_**burn**... **it**... **down**_

_̸͚̻͊͆͆̇̽̓͐̚̚͝͠a̴̜͕̬̫̳̖̞̲̹̤̤͈̹͙̼̘̻͑͊̐̋̅̓͛̅̌̊͆̄̽̓͋̕s̶̨̡̞̖̖̤̭̺̃̋͛̕̕h̵̩̙͎͙̓̌̂͐̾͆̈́̆͗̈́́̏̒̈́͠͝_

Tony tried to force his attention on the people with him now than his failures of the past. Dax, Siles and Natka were all trying to give him space whilst keeping their eyes on everyone. He could feel their concern; part of him wanted to pace and hurt something whilst another part of him just wanted to curl up on a puppy pile of friends. Most of him was just happy that he even had those options. Even if he was somewhat pissed with Pepper right now.

_...worlds_

"When was the last time you saw him with your eyes?" 

_on..._

"He's been busy, he was meant to visit his sister, but he got caught up in his studies and decided to stay. Why?" 

_...fire----̴̨̼̺͖̄̂͜͝-̵̪̠͒̅̐͗̒͘ͅ  
_

"Because I'm looking at Harley right now, and he hasn't been studying. He was in the same place I was!" 

"What?!"

"You heard me. You got played. Find out who you've been giving a free ride to in England." 

"Fine, but I want to know what happened!" 

Tony can't help but think, 'You and me both.' He closed his eyes and tried to order his mind, at least, tried to order the songs that were almost attacking him until he wanted to crouch down or make someone else burn for what had been done. Relaxing minutely as they finally fell back, a wordless tune quietly playing let him breathe and think clearer. Discordant, but without the scratching, howling, cracking--- Tony forced his thoughts into order, barely noticing the ache as long as it gave him a break.

He'd already been blindfolded by the time he met Silver. The chair had left some of his memories. The few he had protected... but it had been slowly stripping bits of him away. So much that he hadn't quite recognised him. Before Silver came on the scene, he had not knelt. That meant that he was in the chair more often than not, if they had cared, he would have been in medical more than his cell. So when Silver arrived, he hadn't made the connection, or maybe part of him had? There had been _something._

When they'd first clashed, Tony's magic had _recognised_ him. He'd always thought it was because Silver's magic came from him, but there had been something… familiar. A scent he knew but didn't. A feeling he couldn't put his finger on. It had been a hundred different things that alone could be ignored, but together, had bound him to a person he had just met, even knowing that it would become a pattern that would be used against him. A pattern that would put Silver at risk.

Tony sat down, pinching the bridge of his nose. His mind was only just coming together post-fracture, and he was not sure he was the best equipped to deal with this. At least the songs had fallen back a little. They were still there, waiting to surge back, tripping over each other, trying to ram into his mind at the same time with the same message. Burn. Burn. Burn. Give in. Burn and let the _Gold_ free.

"Not Pepper's fault." 

Harley. The Kid. Tony remembered that he was far, _far_ too smart and knowing Silver as well as he did, that hadn't changed. If anything, he'd gotten smarter, craftier. He flicks through his mind trying to work out how old Harley would have been when the Civil War went down. 




_1̵͙͖̳̥̹͓̓͆͑͝7̷̮̜͖̤̻̪̣̘̮͂͋̇̍̈́̂̿̅̃̑͒͊̓̅̊̚͝_  
̶̄̀̔̐͜

Whilst his mind was still fractured and that he was closer to Gold right now than Tony… he knew enough that _that_ was probably one of those things people would look horrified at. 

He'd have to check with Sam. It was weird. He found himself needing to see the other man even though he didn't understand why exactly. Sam… He made the miasma of confusing human emotions make sense to him. He took the confusion and laid it out in a way he understood, without making him feel lacking, that he didn't understand. There was something familiar about him that let the man slip past his blocks. Tony had been wary about trusting his entire life. Gold was worse, and yet Sam had wormed his way into the tower, and Tony didn't even have something on him to assure his loyalty yet, which was strange. He knew the man's desires, more than Sam did he suspected. Sam lost someone. Well, everyone lost someone in the Hydra Year's, but Sam was still bleeding for his shattered family, and Tony was waiting for the man to trust him enough to help him find that person. Or at least find out what happens to them if he could. After finding Silver, Tony had more hope for finding the lost of the Hydra Years.

He hadn't even let Natka back into his life without some assurance of loyalty, yet he was looking to the man when he was more Gold than not. He put a pin in that. He'd ask his Soldier about it. Tony could only freak out about some many things at once.

"I know, you're too much like me. Always was. I just wish you hadn't followed me _there_. You set someone up to be you whilst you went elsewhere?" 

Silver... Harley... he was young back then, even for the Charnel House. Even though discerning age was _tricky_ in that place. Even as Tony is now, still more Gold than anything else, he's still sure 17 was _young_ for that place. Which was bad. 

The kind of thing that would make people flinch.

Like his blindfold. Like his brand. Like when his Soldier found out just how much time he spent in that chair. Like the reports he found after he had broken down. Like any report from Zai Base. Tony had been collecting everything he could from that base, because Gold had broken too much to bury Snipe, and he was trying to track where the good guys had sent what he left behind, so he could try and make up for that mistake among his thousands. This fracture had put that, and many other essential things on hold. He would need to get back to work soon.




Even Tony was stuck on that, and Gold didn't so much _see_ age, not when the Charnel House change, change, changed you. When it made them all in top form, every one of the experiments seemed the same age. The chair took away people's true ages. A person is the sum of their experiences, but the chair stripped all of that away, changed you on the inside as the White room changed you on the outside. Hollowed you out and replaced everything.

Whatever they did during his initiation must have made him _seem_ older. At least to Tony. He was taller than him when they met. He had thought he and Silver were the same age, or around about. Tony hadn't even known his own age back then. He hadn't known he was in his 50's and Silver wasn't even old enough to drink.

But... 

Snipe called him _kid._

He must have seen something Tony missed. Something _Gold_ missed. Not surprising really, Snipe always said Gold saw more for his blindfold, but Snipe _understood_ more than Gold _saw_. 

Snipe didn't see as much, but he understood that which was out of Gold's reach. He could read him better than Silver on some days. Snipe knew his songs. Sometimes Snipe knew what they meant when Gold didn't.

What he had known was that Gold _needed_ to protect Silver.

Snipe knew _why_ Silver needed to be protected.

"Yeah. Looking for you. You just… vanished. You never just vanish. It was weeks, and nothing from you. Even if you dropped off the grid, you _always_ told me. You would never block me out like that, so I knew something awful had happened, and I couldn't just leave you on your own." 

Gold hadn't understood; he had just thought it was because Gold wanted to protect Silver. That connection drove him. That he needed to protect Silver. 

He hadn't _seen._

_B̵̰̱̙̫̥̜͔̳̜̙̂͊̇ḷ̴͚̩̟͍̜͇̝͓̗͇͈̖̹͕̎͊̾̈́̒͐͐͆̉̀̔̾̓̕ͅĭ̴̮̘̬̜̳͎̼͔̞̒̌̎̋͌͒͛̇̽̃̽̔̃̊̏͆̓͠n̷̢̛͈̯͇̯̄̉͌͑͆̆̇̾̏͌͘͘d̶̨̼͔͖͉͕̬̳͇̹̦̘͉̘͖̞̰̝̼̳̂̍͂͑̔̄͂̅̏̌̏̓͗̕̚e̶̪̲̫̫̜͋͆ͅd̷̢̨̯̮̦̮̰͍̰͍̬̩̩̙̟͓̜̰̮̆͜_

Couldn't _see._

Bastards robbed him of that.

" _How_ did you end up with Hydra though?" 

That was another thing. Hydra would have known about their connection.

 _Must_ have known. 

Tony was careful when it came to Harley. Careful about who knew he existed. He was pretty sure that he had never told the Avengers about him, for example. Anytime he visited Harley, he never travelled as Tony Stark. No, to Rose Hill he was The Mechanic. He wasn't the famous, polished, perpetually media stalked Tony Fucking Stark. He was the faded shirt, ripped jeans Mechanic that would fix anything you brought to him with a smile as it was just another opportunity to teach Harley something. It was comfort and people not handing him things without being asked. It was a town that was fierce in its silent protection of a celebrity the world loved to hate. The closest he ever came to living a normal life.

He also wasn't stupid enough to think that _Fury_ didn't know.

If Fury knew… even though it was only a few months, then it was likely that Hydra knew.

"Yeah, well. About that. I figured you were chasing Roger's, right? So, I, uh, I hacked FRIDAY to find the signal in his shield recall bracer and went back through his previous locations. The damage report system ran on a separate program to the tracker they disabled. His gear registered damage in a few places, the airport and then..." 

This was his fault. Well, he already knew that, and it made it hard to enjoy the pride and embarrassment warring on Silver's face as he admitted to hacking his AI sister whilst simultaneously being smarter than _anyone_ looking for him.

"Siberia." 

His fault Harley grew up in hell. 

"Yeah, Siberia." 

Tony couldn't help but find it hilarious, but maybe that was a bit of hysteria creeping in, that out of _everyone_ who had spent those seven years looking for him, it was the kid who got closest to finding him. Did find him, just not in a way Tony would ever have wished for. 

Fast too. 

It took Nat over a year to find the base and the tape of the fight. Even including the time she was trapped in Wakanda, it had taken her longer to end up in Siberia than Harley. Which was probably good for her, obviously someone related to whoever picked him up had grabbed Harley. Maybe sticking around to see if anyone came looking for Tony Stark. If she had been faster, then she might have ended up an Experiment in the Charnel House too. Which he wouldn't wish on anyone, enhanced as she was, there would be a higher chance of her surviving. The Weasel would have killed to get his hands on a Widow for his collection; their unique combination of biotechnological and psycho-technological enhancements would have been added to his growing catalogue of different ways to enhance a human. Dr Lyudmila Kudrin's version of the Serum was quite different from Rogers, or the duplication Hydra created for his Soldier.

She was only ten years younger than Rogers, and she never went on ice. No, Tony was happy that Natka had been slow. 

If only Harley had been just a little slower too.

Tony would have preferred never to be found, to suffer in the pit for decades even, anything to spare Harley what he went through. Even though he knew that without Silver, he would have burned to ash long before he became Gold.

It was evident to him what would have become of Experiment 186A without Silver.

He'd have been black bagged for disobedience long before his mind burned up in the chair. Or a handler would have pushed his ability to heal too far. Some Hydra operatives enjoyed having power over the man who was once Ironman. The man who had destroyed so many bases after the exposure of SHIELDRA in his drive to rescue innocent agents burned in the disasters. Some had likely lost friends, some he had personally maimed or stolen captured agents from under them. Which, with Hydra being what it is, would have meant they lost standing in the organisation. His affiliation with Rogers or the Avengers didn't help, or merely the fact he had been a hero. That he had been a person in power, having free reign to do as they wish with him? Especially when he was still belligerent, Tony knows that any number of morons could have accidentally killed him. 

Or he could have snapped sooner. 

Tony had snapped in the end because they took his anchors, but what if he never had any anchors to begin with? Any of that was preferable to Harley growing up in hell, to Natka joining him if she'd been a little faster.

As far as he knew, no one had thought about going through the damage reports in Rogers armour to find him. Hell, _he_ hadn't thought about doing that. It had probably been Clint who had known enough to shut down the active tracking beacons on their gear. Possibly his Soldier. So Tony had been unable to track them directly, it was why he had gone to Sam for Rogers destination. The damage reports, though, they ran on a different system entirely, and Tony hadn't even thought about it, neither had FRIDAY. The kid had always been wicked smart; he thought about things no one else did; he had an eye for patterns that was approaching his own.

So when he really thought about it, he wasn't shocked it had been Harley that got closest to finding him. Even with three people who had known his location.

His Soldier had been barely present. He was a mess of survival, barely broken brainwashing, desperation and the inability to say no to orders that Rogers spouted as easily as he breathed; the second he was able to make a choice, it had been to go into cryogenic suspension. If that wasn't a glaring sign something was wrong, Tony didn't know what was.

T'Challa had been under the impression he was unharmed and able to get home. He had taken data of the Ironman armour and Ironmans battles and easily believed he was fine. He had not taken into account the fact he had gone easy, resulting in catastrophic damage to a man who had barely slept in over 72 hours on the back of a minor heart attack and a broken arm, among other minor injuries plus a probable concussion from having several cars dropped on his head. He went into that place injured, in a damaged suit believing he had two allies. He hadn't thought Captain Truth and Morals! That _he_ would lie or leave a man behind to die in the ice. 

To leave a man behind in a Hydra base, a man Hydra had been trying to get their hands on since he was four years old.

So his Soldier was barely present before he went on ice. T'Challa was naivety and gullibility wrapped in grief.

Rogers? Well, obviously, he told no one—selfish pillock.

_Let me put myself in your shoes as a puppet loosely strung._

It wouldn't fit with his narrative to admit he _beat_ a grieving man down and _abandoned_ him on the ice. Tony hadn't many plans when it came to Rogers. Even when he found out how he ended up in Hydra grips. Rogers had pushed him. Tony had then been happy to destroy his world piece by piece and take his people away. Now? Now Rogers was as much at fault as he was.

_Around you they were so confused..._

Harley didn't just grow up in hell because of _Tony Stark._

_That a faulty man could have so much fun._

Harley grew up in hell because of _Rogers._

_They read your smiles, nothing but teeth._

Maybe… maybe he needed to throw some fuel on that slow-burning fire he had going on what was left from Rogers' reputation, and he thought he had just the videos to do it. As he told the old man, Tony might not remember anything, but his baby girl? His FRIDAY's memory? That was timeless, and she had a vindictive streak a mile wide.

_They looked at you with pity first... then disbelief_

He was sure FRIDAY could come up with some… revealing clips. A website with a suitably dramatic timer and a video released every 22 hours, 47 minutes maybe, that's how long he laid there before he was "rescued". How much time Rogers had had to tell anyone what had happened and spare him and Harley their fate in Hydras pits.

The plan settled some of the fire raging in his mind as he pushed it back, for now, putting his attention on Silver. He figured he'd bring him in on it. Silver and FRIDAY could work together on it as they got to know each other again.

"So, instead of going to someone, you carted yourself off to Siberia?" 

"Well, first, I needed to get out from under Pepper, which is where that engineering program in England came from. Then I used the maintenance grant I got from that to get to Siberia after hiring some dude to be me. FRIDAY and Pepper had sped things up for me."

"What happened when you got there?" 

Silver sat back, his brow creasing slightly as he sorted through his memories. Tony knew that feeling well, and the look on his Soldier face told him that he recognised it too. Hydras chair was a blunt instrument, and it made a mess of what it left behind. Even after so many years to heal, he expected Silver still had gaps. Even with Silvers advanced healing.

"I thought the base was dead. I didn't just charge in guns blazing like an idiot. I scouted it out and did heat scans on the base. But then this creepy dude arrived. Or he might have been in deep enough that I didn't pick him up. I think he was collecting these dead bodies out of what looked like cryo tubes? Packing them up in giant iceboxes. I didn't expect him to shoot me up with tranquillisers before I could think. Some of it's still hazy, the closer to induction, the fuzzier the memories get." 

That made sense. Those first stages where Hydra broke them down. Sensory deprivation of the black cells. The hell of the white room. The faceless guards. The only person you were meant to see in that stage was the Weasel. Even the varying meal times, all of it together started breaking them down, making them more susceptible to the chair.

Silver's mind came back to him faster than most; he wasn't sure if it was his own genetics or if it was from Extremis, what little of the virus he still had in him that was passed to Silver. The virus re-encoded his DNA. Even after it was shut down when the surgery was complete, it couldn't be entirely removed.

So, his current working theory after looking at the Weasels _real_ notes, was Extremis might be why he lived, and others expired. Either way, it let him and Silver come around faster, and it had allowed Tony's body to adapt to so many serums. If he was right and they had used him to alter Silver, then Extremis likely helped him too. Tony wasn't sure, he was good at some squishy sciences, but his own blood work confused the fuck out of him, and it wasn't like he could just trust another doctor with that. He also hadn't found Silver's file yet.

"Yeah, it's the same with me; I still barely remember that fight, just bits and pieces. Like still frames in bright lights, pain, confusion, rage. Then just... ice, waiting. After I arrived at the Charnel House, everything moves in chunks, skipping time before that first time in the chair. They kept me in the black cells far longer than most, and I have more memories of that time, but that was fragmented anyway. I still don't know what bits were real and what was delirium. So if you're fuzzy around induction, it makes sense, and probably is for the best." 

His Soldier leant up against him, and it took Tony a second to work out why. 

Tony didn't really talk about this stuff, but when he started talking to his Soldier after his fracture? He had to admit that it _had_ helped. Getting that out, that he could listen and understand. The Winter Soldier program was different, but he understood what depths and depravity Hydra were capable of. It was _easier_ to talk to these two than Rhodey or Pepper on matters Hydra. 

Even Dax and Siles, who had darkness in their past, flinched when either he or his Soldier spoke of their time as assets. 

It's hard to speak about something that _hurts_ people you care about, especially when it doesn't matter how much they explain. Few people would truly _understand._ Tony's anchors, he could talk to them, and he hoped that Silver could speak to them too. The quick smile and squeeze on his arm from his Soldier made opening up about this shit worth it. Maybe he could keep that up, after they settled Silver in properly. There were things he hadn't touched on, things that still woke him in the night. Things that he had buried carefully over the years, and that fucking fracture had ripped it clean off. Part of him felt like he did when he walked away; part of him felt like he was still in the pits.

"Yeah, some things are better left uncovered. Fuck, I need to apologise to FRIDAY. She is going to hate me." 

Silver dropped his head into his hands, groaning. Tony absolutely had no pity for him on this. They were siblings, no way he was getting involved in that.

"It would be wise; she controls your house."

She controlled his house too. Not a chance was he getting involved. His Soldier snorted in agreement.

"I will, proper like, when we're alone. Why is it that memories of the 'house seem more… real? More... Solid than from _before?"_

"I thought it was the magic at first, my mind not remembering times without it properly? It feels odd, the idea that it hasn't always been with me. But James's memories before his first wipe are faded too. His magic came much later." 

James stayed leaning against him but leaned forward to speak with Silver. Having both of them close, _finally_ , both of them within reach. It helped the edge that was constantly threatening to creep on him at the idea that the kid grew up in hell. The songs that had quietened down again, he knew they were just waiting to surge and drag him under again. He was holding onto the ledge by his fingertips right now, and he knew it. Tony tried not to let it show, but these were two people that could see. They knew where to look. They'd feel it in their magic. His Soldier was very keyed into his magic, from how he fed and from teaching him. Despite the years apart, his and Silver's magic recognised each other as if they had been apart for a day.

They likely didn't know precisely _what_ was pushing him to the edge, but they knew it was _something._ If he said it out loud, they would both shout at him. Silver wouldn't want him to take the blame, and his Soldier would prefer that he blame Rogers than himself. Unfortunately, Tony blamed himself; no matter how hard he tried, he had failed so many times. Even with his mind trying to send him back and back. He blamed himself.

He had tried. 

_~~He had~~ f̴̡̢̞̜̟̣̫͈̓̐͛͜a̵̢̡͕͚̥̳̖͋̾͜͠ỉ̶̡̨̹̖͙̪͙̹̼͍̣̙̲̯̻̙͕̰͗̎̒̈́̄͠l̶̨̦̰̗͎̠͇̜̗̂̈́͜ȇ̵̡͓̥̫̤̮͉̒͋̋͝d̶͎͇͑ _

He _knew_ he had tried. 

He knew he had done everything in his power to protect first Silver, and then Snipe. Silver attracted more attention than Snipe; their magic made them stand out. He had almost desperately tried to protect Silver. It wasn't even day to day; sometimes, it was hour to hour. 

To take anything he could and redirect it at himself. To make sure bored handlers or other Experiments weren't targeting them. To cover for them in fights.

To prepare them for missions. To make sure they had the gear, that they knew how to make more, to make Silver the best of the best, so he was treated better. Snipe knew how to fly under the radar. With their magic such tactics were not available for him or Silver.

To show him how to deal with the handlers, making it so ingrained that they both carried the knowledge throughout the wipes, even without knowing why. So everyone saw Silver as the better-behaved version of Gold, so he'd be protected.

To make sure they didn't go hungry. To make sure both of them ate, especially when they had to fight. That no one stole their food, that they could get water without getting a knife in the gut.

To plant himself as a wall.

So many things, big and small, and it was so hard because he was constantly being dragged in several directions. He was checked out often, he was put in the chair repeatedly, he was used for training, and not only against other experiments. They even brought newly formed Hydra units in as initiations or tests. He rarely got to rest for more than a few days at a time, and no time in that place was truly restful. He was used and used and used, and what little he had left was to protect his friends.

It seemed like so little, but it had been all he could do. It had given him a mission to focus on, centred him. Even when he was fragmenting more and more. Somehow, they knew; looking back, Tony can see that they knew. Even though they shouldn't have been able to, they saw he was burning down no matter how he tried to hide.

"S'like everything was in black and white, and now it's in colour. It's why me and Rogers clashed so much after I broke free of Hydra. He wanted to live in memories which seemed.. flat to me. I wanted to make new memories. Wanted to be free. He wanted me to be a man I barely remembered. I'd spent decades being what other people demanded. I just wanted a chance to find out who _I_ was." 

"Yeah, flat, that's a good way of describing it. I remember my sister. I can see her face, but… part of me misses her, a larger part wants to stay the fuck away. I doubt I'm good for them. You can't go through that shit and not change. It isn't fair to expect you to be the same." 

"I had that at first, I remembered people, but I stayed out hunting Hydra, going after any Handler wearing gold rather than coming back. FRIDAY convinced me in the end. Said I needed more human interactions." 

Tony ran a hand down his face, glaring at his hand which was shaking slightly and trying to force the edges in his mind closer together, but they _hurt._ He needed them together to focus on what was happening now, to be in this room.

"Hey, Gold. I can feel your mind pulling apart; what… what happened to you after they took me?" 

Tony just dismissively waved his hand. What happened after Silver was taken was that he had _failed_ their friend. 

What happened to himself didn't _matter._

"I slowly fractured, started acting erratically. Not one instance, but slowly over time. I blacked out more than once and woke up bloody, or in solitary. I tried to keep the edges in place, just lost too much time. I still don't remember what happened during that period." 

Silver jumped up at that, all frenetic energy and rage as he paced a few steps away and back to them.

"Shit, fuck! I told them! I… they just wiped you over and over, didn't they? That was always their answer to fucking _everything,_ but me and Snipe tried to shield you of the worst of it, make sure the guards didn't see." 

His soldier stilled at that whilst Tony blinked, shocked. He hadn't realised they were protecting him as he was protecting them. Although he certainly did end up in the chair a lot more after Silver was gone. Even with Snipe trying to keep him together. The fact he took to standing near the recalibration room for hours on end unless Snipe could drag him away didn't help. His head still hurt if he thought back to that time. Tony was pretty sure he had been wiped more in that period than in the previous year combined. The last time his mind had been as close to solid as he could remember, was when he had been with his handler. When he had offered him an out, knowing what Tony was going back too, but Tony hadn't understood his warning. Hadn't known what was coming, hadn't known how long he would spend on the chair. Hadn't known he would let go of those pieces in his mind and purposefully let them shatter. 

Silver magic suddenly flashed across his vision, cutting off that train of thought in its tracks. In-between blinks, he saw that Silver had shifted and was now sat on his heels in front of him. Cool silver magic suddenly started to slip in through the cracks of his mind. Following pathways that were still lit up with gold and just like that, the sharp jagged edges began to dull. The grating gravel scratching across the glass of his mind smoothed out, and it was finally easier to breathe around the mass of information vying for his attention.

He hadn't known, _how_ hadn't he known? 

Silver was his anchor, but he had been _literally_ holding his mind together too. 

No wonder things went to hell when his magic faded more and more each day until he wasn't sure he could remember what it felt like.

"Is he okay?" 

"I don't know. I used to use my magic to fill in the fractures. It helped him hold the edges together, stopped the sharp edges cutting him up so much. But... it's been years. His mind has changed a lot since I last did this... There is a lot more gold than there used to be, cracks in different places. More of them too."

The gold had slowly increased the longer they starved him. Starving him was never smart, but then they didn't know. No one had known about his hunger. He never told anyone, he couldn't even risk Silver having that information as it would have put Silver at risk. Friday had been the first. Dax had been the one to tell him just how _dangerous_ it is to starve something like him. Dangerous for other people, that is.

"I fucked up when they took you. I couldn't keep the edges together; they wiped, wiped, wiped, and Snipe… I finished fights I didn't remember starting. They decided I was compromised. Worried I'd turn and kill a handler. Maybe I did, I don't know. Then they shipped me to Zai Base, and they didn't know they were doing it, but they were starving me. Not a good plan." 

His mind was in different places at once again, but something kept pulling him back to the penthouse every time he started to drift. He was in the Penthouse, The Charnel House, The medical base... Thinking about Snipe was pain. Pure, blinding pain of a wound that never healed right, which had been violently reopened, and Tony didn't know how to pack that down again.

He remembered keenly when he'd picked up his scent in a room that reeked of death, just seconds, and he had completely cracked. How he'd _let go_ of the pieces of his mind, _let_ them _Shatter_ on the floor and gave into the creeping Gold. How he failed at even taking him out of that place because he had been little more than seething rage. 

How he became what he needed to hunt the monster. 

Shred its heart. 

_B̷̢̛̘̮̜̹̽͐͜ů̴̺̦͊͑͜r̵͎̐̉̌͠ṅ̸̺̪̟̗̬̺͋́ͅ i̴̗͈̘̽t̸͈͍̪̟̤̆͌͆̄͆̅͘͜ ̸̥̈́͛̾a̵̳͉͍͇͉̐̀l̴̨̹͙̝̦̘̣̋̀̕ḷ̴̝̼̩͔͖͋͜ ̸̯͉͔͎̃͌d̶͚̽̾͊ơ̶̻͊̾̚ẅ̷͙̹̼́́̽̓ǹ̸̪̪̗͍_

He had finally cracked at that moment. It was the only excuse he had for leaving him in that place. For not even having the presence of mind to stop and _see_ his friend now his eyes were free of that blindfold. He had been fractured and breaking his mind for year's, holding everything together for two people. Gold hadn't cared about life at that point. He just wanted to break Hydra as they had broken him.

If thinking about Snipe was pain… Telling _Silver_ how he'd failed was _worse._

Silver pulled him back to the room again, with a bit more force that time, his fingers still resting on Tony's temples. How had he forgotten that Silver did this? How _could_ he forget that? What else was missing? Hundreds of instances he had forgotten suddenly flicked across his mind on luminous pathways of silver magic.

Tony thought he had been out of that place long enough that he had all of the memories of his time there back. Sure, he was missing chunks of time before Siberia, but that had been exposed to the chair more than new memories gained after. He didn't like the feeling that he was still missing time. What else was hidden in his mind? He had broken his mind in order to disguise memories. Tony wondered if he would ever honestly know his own mind ever again.

"Snipe was not your fault, Gold. They'd been wiping you too much even when I was still there. Some of the techs were just looking for _any_ excuse to wipe you. To wipe you till you bled. Till you were knocked unconscious. Look, we're fine, we're here right, stay in this room with us. Stay in this time. Give me your hand." 

Tony tilted his head in confusion at that last part, but then assumed that it wasn't directed at him, as someone else joined Silver's fingers at his temple. Then black flooded his vision, with white stars that seemed just right there but far away, and that was safety. It was home. It was the complete opposite of being cold, lost and alone. As it mixed with the silver, that feeling flooded over any negative emotion, and whilst he couldn't see anything through the mixed magic, everything steadily began to pull him back. No more split through time and place. No more pain.

It was a struggle, like walking through mud as he pulled the pieces together again. Luckily he wasn't alone as he pulled himself back into the room and pulled back from the flood of gold that wanted to watch people burn for what they did to hurt his family. Then he was just in the room instead of split into places and time. Suddenly left blinking and seeing the penthouse through wisps of silver and black. 

Weren't there more people here a moment ago? 

There were definitely more people. How long had he been pulling apart?

"They're not gone, Gold; they've just stepped out to pick up some food for us. You with us?" 

Silver still had a knack for prompting his questions, it seemed. He nodded and leaned towards his Soldier when Silver went to move, though, he caught his hand. There was no way either man was getting far away from him. Not for a while, at least. 

"I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going anywhere." 

"I'm pretty sure this is meant to be the other way around. We just rescued you. I'm meant to make you feel better." 

Tony was at least sure about that. Then he had been worse than useless since his fracture. He was a liability.

"You looked out for me for years in hell Gold, maybe let me _finally_ look out for you now we're free." 

"Tony, just rest, yeah, you've had a rough time. Let your head come back together in its own time; don't force yourself to rush. Maybe Silver can teach me how to help." 

He forced himself to relax back slightly, thinking that he could at least try to do that. He had been getting better at letting other people care, even if it made him feel useless occasionally. His Soldier just told him that he didn't need to have a _use_ to be important to them; it was a tricky concept when sometimes Tony still thought about himself in concepts he learned at Hydra. Even he knew he was more _'after'_ than _'before',_ and Hydra had taken that man, hollowed him out, rebuilt him, remade him. Whilst Tony knew on a logical level. He _was_ free. His mind still thought survival required certain factors. If you didn't have a _use_ in the Charnel House, you were worse than dead. You were meat for slaughter.

"I can try. Me and Gold spent so long linked through our magic whilst he trained me, that I can just... _feel_ his fractures. It's hard to explain." 

Tony could agree with that, at least. The fractures were in his own mind, and he struggled to explain them half the time.

"I need you to tell me everything." 

"Gold, I'm not sure if that's a good idea. At least not _right now."_

"I need that data. I can't work without all the pieces." 

Silver froze for a fraction of a second before sitting down on the floor in front of himself and James as Tony didn't want to give up his arm. Tony didn't know what it was that made him freeze, however. Silver had always been good at drowning out his ability to read him when he truly wanted. He couldn't hide everything, just like Tony couldn't entirely block Silver, but they could muddy the waters. Tony hadn't told him back in that place how his reading ability worked because he didn't want a handler to overhear, but Silver had worked out that Gold could read somethings just like he could. _Different_ things, but it was _something._

The handlers assumed his inability to read minds or intentions like Wanda or Silver was made up for by the sheer strength of his magic. Gold didn't dissuade them of this. His increased strength was due to his ability to take energy from others, but they hadn't known that.

So whilst he didn't know _why_ Silver froze. He knew that he was worried and wanted Tony's mind to come together; that was all Tony could decipher.

"Fine, fine, first, tell me about your last mission first, yeah. Like we used to. You were gone too long, so I know who it was. What did he do that time?" 

Tony frowned, thinking back to the mission he had before everything went to hell. Ketch hadn't done anything terrible. He never did; he was the only handler that was kind. Even after _years_ of checking him out, he was… nice. Nice at a time where Tony’s bar was set abysmally low, Ketch didn't have to do that. Tony obeyed anyway as Ketch knew about Silver. Ketch didn't have to be nice to him, didn't have to bring him real food, didn't have to talk _to_ him rather than _at_ him, didn't have to let him sleep, in a _bed_ of all places. He didn't have to _persist_ with friendly gestures even when Tony kept turning him down. Ketch did a million things that he didn't have to do. He went out of his way for Gold, when Gold already willingly knelt for his handler. 

It had confused him more than the hostile handlers. In a way, those handlers were _easier_ to deal with. Oh, he didn't _prefer_ them; he honestly would have liked to only belong to Ketch back then. At the same time, he just hadn't understood Ketch. Being beaten and the blindfold roughly forced on was _easier_ to understand. Being talked down to, injured, barely provided with gel packs, given virtually impossible orders, forcing him to fight Hydras top team's as training… all of that, and a lot more, was Gold's everyday life. It was what Gold expected. It was the treatment he thought he was due. Coming back from a mission without being knocked out and dragged to medical after a few rounds in the chair was the top of his hopes for adequate treatment. 

Ketch skewed that. When faced with Ketch's... quiet reluctance and distaste to put the blindfold back on... Gold hadn't known how to react. Even now, so many years free, Tony isn't sure how to quantify his feelings about Ketch. Still didn't know how to respond to the kind handler who treated him strangely, even year's free of that dynamic. Especially now everything felt so… recent again. All that confusion was uselessly back in his mind.

Even if Silver hated Ketch… Gold looked forward to when Ketch was his handler, even though he tried to remain wary and cautious around Ketch. He gave in occasionally, in small increments over the years and not once did Ketch use that power against him. It made it easier to give in again.

Every time he offered him an out, to get him away from the Charnel House, he let his refusal stand. Unlike others who had tried, Ketch never took his no out on him. Never tried to _force_ him to say yes. Never used what he had on Gold to force his hand. He just seemed... sad? Sad seemed accurate. Gold was never good at knowing what Ketch felt. He had looked sad that he had to send him back into the Charnel House. Sad that he had to put the blindfold back on him. Reluctant, but he still followed his wishes. No other handler acted even _slightly_ similar to Ketch. 

He was a Handler that he did missions for with less reluctance. Gold had always been nervous about the day Ketch turned out to be like the others. It hadn't happened, though, not once in five years before Tony had wiped out Hydra. Ketch was _consistent_ at a time when his life had been unmoored. Whenever Ketch took him out, even if it was only for a few days, Gold could _rest._ He tried not to give in, but even he had a limit, and after so many years, Gold had been _tired._

Ketch always respected his no, even when Gold was also completely broken down. Which, considering the sizable power imbalance, was pretty significant. Even Tony could recognise that. Especially with what happened to Silver, if the Weasel could ignore Silver's no, he bet Ketch could have overridden him. Tony didn't know precisely what Ketch's power base was, but he knew that he was powerful. Tony had been sure that Hydra was a side gig for the man, so if the Weasel could take Silver even if he said no, then Ketch could have just taken him, but he never did.

He asked once and then agreed with him and then wouldn't say anything until the end of the next mission. Ketch treated him… almost like a human. In some ways, the reminder he wasn't just a weapon was nice. In others… it could make him hope. Hope was a dangerous thing in the Charnel House.

Out of every Handler, it was only Ketch that refused to allow the Techs to wipe him over and over. He argued on his behalf. Defended him. He had gotten more than one fired that were _particularly_ enthusiastic about wiping him. That had, (and still did, even after _years_ of freedom and separation, after so many blood covered golden symbols, after fires had burned down to ashes scattered in the wind,) utterly confused him; he was a handler that seemed actually to care.

There were some missions that Ketch had even _skipped_ the chair entirely, where he easily walked back to his cell with memories and images of the outside. Another mission and another wipe eventually took them, but he had had weeks of what outside looked like in his mind. That Ketch had the power to do that and that he chose to do that for him? For a handler, it was aberrant behaviour; in time, he had just become his handler.

As confusing as all of this was, it _was_ in the _past._

Even with the fracture throwing his memories out of whack, the turbulence made it feel like he had seen both Ketch and Snipe yesterday. As if they were still a part of his life.

Tony hadn't spoken about Ketch since he left; only recently had he told his Soldier briefly about one mission with the man. Tony didn't know _how_ to talk about Ketch, didn't even know how to _think_ about him, so he had buried it. Part of him was content to put it in the past. It didn’t matter now. No handler, not even Ketch could make him obey now if he could turn up tomorrow. Neither Tony nor Gold was a weapon to be picked up by anyone, certainly not ghosts of his past.

That was all Ketch was now, another ghost with imprints and echoes on his mind.

No one else even knew Ketch's name, let alone the complicated mash-up of confusion the handler still provoked in him. Even his Soldier didn't know quite how tied he had become to the handler. Tony had tested his waters, told him about one mission, wanting to see how he felt before he mentioned anything more.

Even Silver only comprehended a little. It was hard to tell other people who had been in their situation that there had been a handler that he didn't just tolerate, but that he had _liked._ He did not know what Silver or Snipes reaction would have been, and now he didn't know how his Soldier would have reacted, so, Tony mostly just kept it to the confines of his own mind. Some people were on the fence over his tactics of dealing with handlers and Hydra, (Tony would never understand why anyone frowned at Hydra dying bloody), so he imagined this confusion wouldn't help matters.

As Silver was not to be perturbed, Tony brought up his last mission with Ketch in his mind, and tried to find what Silver wanted, and what he could tell them. Nothing came up as _particularly_ interesting, or incriminating. It was just a regular mission. If anything Tony was pretty sure Ketch hadn't needed him for it, and it had been Ketch's way of giving him a break from the pits. Ketch did that now and then. Ketch had been one of the few people he could sleep around back then. The handler somehow _knew_ when Gold was too close to the edge, when he needed a break, and then he suddenly had a mission. Ketch would see him take a severe injury, and then he provided him with the chance to recuperate. He had even learned what happened to Silver during that mission and tried to give him an out, but Gold hadn't understood, and after that, after he lost Silver, he had been too dangerous to be allowed on missions.

Some of Ketch's missions seemed longer, he thought, but they were usually low impact and rare. Most handlers got fed up with him after a few days, but Ketch never did, even when Gold was feeling more belligerent than usual. He rarely came back injured or starving from Ketch. Even when he said no to the real food, Ketch made sure he ate the regulation packs at timely intervals. Heck, he occasionally put on weight after Ketch's missions.

Tony didn't quite see the relevance of remembering his missions now, not after what he had done to Hydra and his handlers. But this was familiar. Silver liked to know what he remembered from his missions. The chair took visual data, but it left his maps, it left his profiles, and it left any new scents he had picked up. 

Also, Silver hated Ketch, even if Gold didn't know why. For some reason, he hadn't let go of that.

"He had hot food?" 

Silver snorted as if that meant something to him. So Tony didn't mention that that time he _had_ given in to that offer. That he had eaten real, hot food, every day, _multiple times_ on some days. That Ketch broke the rules to do that for him, broke many rules for no gain. Took risks and got nothing out of it. 

"What? Am I missing something?" 

"I didn't trust that man. When I got more of my memories back, I remembered more about him. I never trusted him. You used to say he knows you. We thought he knew _too much_ about you _._ I was _sure_ he was making a profile on you, as you do on everyone else. Why would a handler _need_ to do that? Why would a handler _need_ to be nice? It was suspicious. I got a weird vibe off the guy; he was dangerous. More dangerous than any other handler I remembered." 

Tony thought about it. His head was still slightly cotton balled, but he couldn't quite tell if Silver was just trying to distract him or not; he knew Silver did that occasionally if he didn't want to do something Gold chose. Tony was pretty sure Raylor had been more dangerous than Ketch. Raylor even checked Silver out and told Gold often what would happen to Silver if he ever stopped obeying. Much more dangerous.

Sure, Ketch _did_ seem to know a lot about him back then; he knew how to read him when others failed. Knew when he was hungry or tired. Knew how Gold craved to see things. He knew all kinds of things about him, enough that he _could_ have used it against Gold; instead, he used that knowledge to be kind. Gentle even. Gold had really considered him _his_ handler back then, and even looked forward to some missions with him. It had been confusing, but gentle contact had been a rarity. 

As he was now, as Tony, he still couldn't understand what Ketch's motivations had been. Maybe he had just been kind? A rarity in that place. It hadn't been something he had cared to look into too hard as the second iteration of Gold took apart Hydra piece by piece. 

Gold had more interest in killing his those gold wearing wretches, not talking to them.

No version of him understood Ketch, and Tony wasn't good with things he didn't understand. Had a habit of destroying them. He was uncomfortable knowing Silver had hated the man when he didn't understand _why._ He had tried over the years to convince Silver about this, but no matter how many times Silver was wiped, as soon as he saw Ketch, that hatred returned.

"Ketch knew things. Kept my secrets. Would dim the lights and didn't hurt me. The food was good. He was kind." 

This was ridiculous; Ketch was not here now, he could not be here, and Tony felt awkward speaking about him. 

"Yeah, he was checking you out for years." 

"I'm not sure the relevance of this, unless you are trying to distract me again? This seems like a distraction." 

"No, I'm going to tell you everything. Every time you came back from Ketch, I used to get you to tell me everything you remembered, because I didn't trust him, remember?" 

"Yes, I never knew why then, either. Plus, it's not like he can check me out again now. I'm no one's weapon but my own, even fractured. I know this." 

"In those two years before Tony came back, he was hunting Hydra, but specifically all of his old handlers as Mr Gold too, had everyone scrambling to find out who he was as he cut a bloody path through Hydra."

"Okay, okay. Can we eat first? And I want to hear more about _that!_ Not the cliff notes version I got on the way home. I also want to meet these strange people you live with." 

Now he was confident that Silver was delaying him. Good tactic, though, because Tony zoned out at Silver calling the Penthouse home, similar to when his Soldier did it for the first time. When his family spoke about it as 'home', Tony's brain needed a reboot.

"FRIDAY, tell everyone they can come back in. Maybe… ask Sam if he will visit soon?" 

Silver glanced at him, head tilted to one side in a gesture that was so like his own it was like looking in a mirror in some ways. Even though it was still strange _seeing_ Silver at all. So many years spent in the dark, seeing still took him by surprise occasionally.

"Sam? Is he the one that helps you? Like Snipe did?" 

Tony used his phone to flick a picture up on the screen of the last time Sam had visited. Testing out the new set of Wings had been nearly entirely designed by Sam himself now he was getting more confident in the workshop. He pointed to Sam flying high in the gym as Peter was hanging upside from the rafters. Tony had been bringing their little unit together for training- training that was much more organised and beneficial than Rogers version. Tony had been hinting to the world about a replacement to the Avengers, and by the time they launched, he planned on Sam being fully moved into the tower and removed from Rogers' influence.

"Yes, He's the one with the Wings. He... helps me understand things that the chair took, like Snipe did. The wipes, even now, things have not come back. That was why I would never teach you. My mind hasn't healed as yours has. The wipes widened the fractures and took things from me that it left for others. Sam helps fill some of the gaps."

"Huh, I'll have to meet him. You always did collect people and needed to be around people. It's why I always worried about Ketch; your gaps made you vulnerable to him."

Tony rolled his eyes at the irritated look on Silver's face. His Soldier was watching them, absorbing information that he hadn't known, he could almost feel his curiosity, and he wondered if he was going to be facing more questions that he couldn't answer, about a handler no longer in his life. How would he even be able to talk to another person who despised all handlers about the one he hadn't hated? Even if he hadn't known why.

"I never said yes. I never left. I gave in for some things, but I never said yes, because then I'd have lost you and Snipe."

"I know, Gold, it's fine. I'm just paranoid, and you were gone for so long before they collected me. So I knew it was Ketch. It always was if you were gone for a long time. I didn't like the idea of him forcing you into something. It was the last thing I knew, and I had years to think about it."

"He didn't. For my handler, he was not bad; he was just… different."

Tony shrugged before turning his attention to Dax and Siles as they came back in with a frankly huge stack of pizzas. For other people, at least, for them, it was dinner. Tony sighed in relief, hoping the conversation track would shift to something else whilst also being reminded that he was hungry. If he hadn't recently fractured, he might be able to manage this conversation better. As he was, he was worried he would slip or say something that he shouldn't. It kept kicking him back into memories that should be relegated to the past.

He also couldn't remember the last time he ate something substantial that wasn't crappy hotel food. Solid food or otherwise, come to think of it. His soldier must have noticed a tell or something, because the moment he thought about it, he leaned forward and pulled him back. Tony's back resting on his chest and slipped his right hand under his shirt, sparking immediately with black and gold magic. James was better at tracking his hunger than himself these days, and right now, Tony wasn't able to hide some of his tells, it seemed. He was too close to how he had been when his world was dark.

It wasn't a meal, but it took the edge off, and it meant he could start to relax as Pizzas were handed out. 

Dax ignored the seats and decided to sit on the floor next to Silver, leaning back onto Tony and James' legs for the contact. Now his mind was coming together; he was starting to feel the time he'd spent shattered and just holding on by a string. Missing things like this, contact with his people had been too risky in that state.

Tony had spent that time shattered reverting back to some of his old patterns, ones that he'd forged during the _second_ Gold iteration. There were some from his time at the Charnel House, but it had been primarily the second iteration. So he'd been touch averse for the most part, for everyone but his soldier. Even with his Soldier, it had been nothing like their normal levels after he moved into the Tower. Tony shuffled forward a little, so he could keep in contact with them both and have his hand on Dax's shoulder. Points of contact that helped ground him from the pain in his mind and the confusion Silver had inadvertently kicked up.

He remembered that Dax had been there for him. That after the call, his magic had surged up, boiling and he had utterly lost control. He remembered FRIDAY being frantic, but he couldn't remember her words, just streams of gold, of rage, of hopelessness and the need to rip, rend, break and shred anything his magic could reach. That it had been building and showing no signs of stopping until suddenly Dax was there, and bright orange fire and magic weaved into his own as he tried to help control it. Tony hadn't recognised him at first, so he had reacted instinctively to attack, but his magic liked Dax, his magic knew something was wrong, so it reached out for help. Ignoring his instruction.

Dax had burnt himself up so that Tony had had something familiar to hold onto whilst he slowly pulled back. There had been a few spikes, but by the time his Soldier had returned, his magic had folded back inside of him. Dax was the only reason that the damage hadn't spread past the main rooms. Dax was why the Tower was still _standing,_ and he was why Gold hadn't vanished into the night before his Soldier had reached the Tower.

The small contacts with everyone were like bricks. Add each one, and he became stronger again. 

"Thanks, Dax." 

Dax gave him a smile before waving it off, Tony understood. To Dax, it hadn't been a question. There had been one course of action; why would he have taken a different one?

"Anytime, Tony, so do you want to go be Silver? Or Harley?" 

"Silver, I… that's who I want to be. The Weasel tried to take that from me when he took me away. I'm happy to be Silver again." 

"I take it everything went well on your mission?" 

Siles asked, eyeing everyone for potential injuries as his Soldier answered. Tony had to hide a chuckle, because his Soldier was still sulking about how he had removed the door.

"Yeah, I tried to unlock a door for 10 minutes, before Tony came and ripped the thing out of the wall." 

"Ah, and you're grumpy that you didn't think of it first?" 

He and Silver couldn't help laughing at the utterly put-out look on his Soldier's face, because that summed it up quite perfectly, really. 

"I'm still new to augmenting my strength with my magic as Tony does. I keep forgetting I can use them together. The serum wouldn't have budged it, I could have crushed the lock, but that might have made things worse."

"I was the same, don't worry, old man, Gold will train that impulse out of you."

"Usually, we take half a building and race to the end; being stuck cuffing was not fun."

Tony chuckled, he had to admit, not having to cuff the people he dealt with had freed him up to move faster, but it meant his Soldier had had to follow him. Cuffing anyone who surrendered. The mission might have given him a goal, but he had still been fractured. 

Normally neither Gold nor Tony would have allowed himself onto the field in such a state, but it had been Silver. So instead of acting in their usual roles, his Spider and Soldier had had to dedicate themselves to watching him rather than doing their own jobs. 

Tony was lucky to have family that helped him.

Even when he was broken, even when his mind splintered and cracked, they remained at his side.

* * *

_Marching through this world_

_As the ambers floats around his weary head_

_Somethings got to give cause every man has got to live_

_So wipe your head before you drop and give_

* * *

Tura Lu - The Bollox

Brighter Than Gold - Louis II

Fire - Griffinilla

Warriors Song - Audiomachine

Fire - Barns Courtney 

Hands Up - City Wolfe 

Puppet Loosely Strung - The Correspondents

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hid a little Easter egg in this chapter, so congrats if you found it!


	2. Mechanic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A kid will chase his Mechanic. 
> 
> Sometimes with such zeal that he forgets that others might be on the same trail. 
> 
> Hyperfocus can be a blessing and a curse, it highlights things that no one else would ever find, but it can blind you to dangers lurking in the wings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ashes will be following a similar format as Silver. We have Tony in the present day... And Harley in the past.
> 
> This is his story about how he came to The Charnel House, and the years he spent there.
> 
> Similar warnings to that which I put in Silver, as we   
> now follow Harley down the path Tony already walked.

**_-Harley POV-_ **

Harley had been trying to lose himself on his current robotics project for the advanced college class he'd been taking on top of his regular work for a while now. Unfortunately, he was not getting very far in this endeavour. His mind was a treacherous thing, and no matter  _ how _ he tried to force it onto a task, it  _ wandered.  _ Not a new problem. It was something he had dealt with for as long as he could remember, but this time was  _ different. _ This time all he could think of was his d-. His… was… it was _Tony._

It was his damned Mechanic, and  _ Harley couldn't reach him. _

He was back in front of the TV, waiting for updates. 

He was back on the computer searching for updates. 

He was pestering FRIDAY for updates...

He was texting  _ anyone _ who could possibly know  _ what the fuck _ was happening...

See. They had had plans. 

Harley was going to spend some time at the tower with Tony. Might not sound like much, but it was, for both of them. Harley might have once thought Tony just put up with him, but he had long since learned that Tony needed him just as much as he needed Tony. Neither of them could say it, but they knew, and that was more important than their inability to discuss things like feelings and emotions.

His Mechanic had been working himself to the bone over some junk that General 'Thunderbolt' Ross was squawking on about. No one liked Thunderbritches, yet the tool was  _ everywhere. _ Every video chat they had had lately, Tony had looked just that bit more exhausted than the last, and he had not been great since everything went down with Ultron. 

So his mom had suggested that he spend some time at the tower. 

She was good like that, good at spotting things from a distance, from interviews and press conferences. She got all she needed from how Tony looked on a video chat. She just knew when Tony needed a break. Could see better than people who had known Tony for decades. Usually, when that happened, his mom would take a screwdriver to a piece of tech in the house and innocently drop it into a conversation. 

The next day Rose Hill's Mechanic would turn up.

He wasn't  _ Tony Fucking Stark _ to Rose Hill. Oh, they  _ knew. _ They weren't stupid. They knew who he was, and they knew why he just seemed to turn up in town—lined up perfectly for when Tony Stark seemed to take a week away from the media circus that was his life.

They knew he was Tony Stark, but that  _ didn't matter. _

To Rose Hill, he was The Mechanic, and that's what mattered.

Rose Hill's mechanic was often found in torn jeans and faded band shirts. Occasionally in an old, stretched hoody that he tucked his knees into when watching movies as his sister tried valiantly to find a comfortable spot whilst half balancing on his head. Or they were at the dinner where his mom worked, and people came and asked him to fix something or another.

Harley would always be there, learning how to fix anything and everything, how to upgrade, how to build whatever it was they were looking at for that day. It had spread from there; the more he visited, the more people came. It was pretty lucky Rose Hill's actual Mechanic had left a few years back, because he would have lost every damned customer. 

Nearly everyone had at least one picture with Rose Hill's Mechanic, but you would never find them online. Because Rose Hill was fucking  _ loyal _ to a famous man who fixed their fucking toasters and played hide and seek with their kids. They got a side of the man who didn't care if he got caked in mud. That time it started pouring with rain, and kids being kids, now had mud and an adult target. Rose Hill knew they had something special, and they wanted to give back as much as they received.

Any time Tony left, he looked lighter. He looked  _ younger. _ He left  _ smiling, _ and he surged at whatever had been dragging him down before he visited. 

His mom was great, and most of it had come from her. She spoke to practically everyone in this town, and she could organise anything with a little time and a telephone tree. She might be a waitress, but she was better with people than anyone Harley knew of. Tony spent his life hiding behind these impervious masks, and his mom took one look at him and decided this man needs two things. A hug and a break.

That he needed a tiny slice of the  _ ordinary _ that had never been on the cards for him. How he had been thrust into the media by his dad at four years old and never managed to escape. 

There were times that she could tell that Tony wouldn't be able to visit. Even if she broke every electronic item in their house. That was when Harley would find that she had worked out an official reason for him to go to Tony. Usually regarding school or something related.

His mom and Pepper got on like a house on fire, and both of them knew how to make a person too smart for his own good think something was his idea. Harley knew because his mom did it to him often enough. Not that he minded, he loved going to New York.

He wished he was there right now, but things had gotten to the point that Tony had called his mom to postpone his trip. Sure, Harley _got_ _why,_ but he also _hated_ why. 

Tony was in the line of fire,  _ again. _

Tony was there far, far too often in Harley's opinion, and a common theme was starting to show itself. A pattern that even he could see from so far away. That once again, The jerk-vengers were fucking things up. Again. 

Once again, the blame was on, you guessed it, Tony Stark. Once-a-fucking-gain, Tony had people demanding he move the earth, sea, heaven and stars… and when he pulled off a damned miracle, the dunce-vengers never considered giving credit where credit was fucking due. Then, because these people really were the most entitled fuckwits Harley had the displeasure of sharing the planet with, they damned condemned him! For doing what they demanded he do! 

The great Captain Jack Off was standing up there, as if he was the king of the fucking world. As if he could do  _ no wrong. _ Wearing a damned flag on his ass and storming around the globe without a glance behind.

As if the dead weren't starting to pile up at his feet. 

Dead people who he knew that Tony knew the names off. Family that he knew Tony had contacted to help. Guilt that slipped off the  _ good Captain's _ shoulders and slammed right on his fucking da-  _ Tony.  _ Fuck, he couldn't even say it in his head.

Tony didn't know how much he knew, of course. 

Harley had enough back doors into his systems by now that even Tony didn't know when he was sneaking in. Even FRIDAY didn't catch him half of the time. Harley could pretty much thank Tony and FRIDAY for their inadvertent training and the fact he was not so secretly a white-hat hacker by this point. Tony never discussed it directly, but Harley knew he approved. That was pretty obvious when Tony would  _ accidentally _ leave flash drives in his bag with information or directions on something to look into. He would find notes from Tony hidden in code that he could only find if he were hacking Tony. 

So he knew that Tony knew that he hacked him too, but he didn't catch him every time. Harley would feel guilty, but Tony tended to congratulate him for beating him; Tony knew that he didn't have many people in school to challenge him, and he needed the challenge, or he'd get bored. Barring that, Harley knew Tony hadn't caught him every time because he found things Tony would prefer to protect him from. So, Harley had used his developing skills to find out just what was going on. What those freeloading parasites were up to this time.

The Block-Head-Captain and The Witch-Bitch were the main two he monitored. The compound was  _ much _ easier to hack than the Tower. Romanoff either wasn't as good as she thought she was, or she knew someone was popping in and out. As for why she was occasionally hacking the security on her house? Harley had no idea, but she left cracks  _ everywhere,  _ cracks that he readily utilised to both monitor and keep records of the Parasitic-vengers. 

Harley definitely thought something was sus with the Widow. Deleting chunks of video was suspicious enough, but records for equipment requisitions and quinjet fuel documentation were also going missing, and he wanted to know what she was doing for the Captain Stick-In-The-Mud. He knew that much as he had seen Stick ordering her to clear their tracks. Harley couldn't tell if she was leaving breadcrumbs on purpose or not, because she didn't delete that very obvious, incriminating video. Tony didn't monitor them as he did; maybe she just assumed he did and was trying to tell him something? Typical spies, she couldn't just  _ call _ Tony? No, that would be  _ easy. _

_ Adults overcomplicated everything. _

So, with his in, Harley had watched the whole meeting about the Accords with Thunderstitch and the stooge-vengers. Harley had been confused at first, because it was as if several of them had never even heard of The Accords.  _ How?! _ Even  _ Harley _ knew about the Accords. 

The UN wasn't exactly big on secrets. It was all about transparency, and putting together a world initiative to help solve the _superhero_ _problem_ was big news. 

They even had a whole week dedicated to it in Civ Class! He knew more from Tony, of course. A school overview over five, one-hour classes wasn't going to touch a two-inch-thick document that was created by  _ teams _ of lawyers from all around the world.

Having these privileged fucks, who had  _ caused the whole mess _ that triggered the damned Accords, not even know it existed? That rankled. Did they not watch the news? It directly concerned them, and yet, they just didn't care! They thought they were  _ above _ such things. For a man that claimed to fight for the little guy, he didn't seem to care what those little guys were screaming 

Harley had no idea how Tony stayed civil during that meeting, to be honest. He was swearing up a storm just watching.

Things didn't get better in the days after that, but then, it wasn't the first time he had seen the team attack his da- _FUCK._ His Mechanic...

Harley had watched Captain Jerk Off throw that damned shield at his Mechanic. Watched a Norse God strangle him whilst his team, his so-called fucking family, just stood there and  _ watched.  _ Uncle Rhodey had a concussion; what excuses did the others have?

Not only was Tony a team member, not only was he  _ baseline fucking human _ compared to them… it had been blindingly evident to Harley that something had been  _ wrong _ with Tony. But he was a kid, and Tony always tried so hard to put on a brave face for him, tried so hard to fill that gap in Harley's life. The idiot didn't know he had filled it long ago. Harley was also an idiot because he didn't know how to fucking tell him that.

After the whole Ultron debacle was over, after Tony had been proven in court to not be at fault, Harley had started looking at educational programs in New York on his own and signing up for everything. So he would have an excuse to visit more. Sometimes he just turned up anyway. Tony never turned him away.

Tony took better care of himself when he was around, because they ate together. Tony insisted that Harley leave the workshop occasionally to be in the sun and fresh air, and of course, he refused unless Tony joined him.

Things had gotten chaotic again with the Accords, and Tony wanted Harley  _ out _ of harm's way. Which always meant that Tony was  _ in _ harm's way. 

Which brought Harley to where he was now. Sat in his bedroom,  _ safe, _ whilst Tony was… somewhere else, somewhere  _ not safe. _ Somewhere with people who weren't his family.

He and FRIDAY, however, they talked. She was his sister, and sometimes the kids need to conspire to keep the adults healthy. 

FRIDAY also occasionally needed to vent. 

Which meant he knew  _ all _ about the Craptain's little tantrum over the Accords and how it didn't end in that meeting room. How everyone was dumping everything on Tony.  _ Again. _ How Tony was desperately trying to fix things for everyone but himself.  _ Again. _ He rarely attempted to make things better for himself. The Avengers called him selfish, and yet they were the ones acting on self-interest anytime he looked in on things.

He watched the airport battle. 

He saw Uncle Rhodey fall from the sky. 

Tony had called him from the hospital after that, and Harley wanted to drop everything and go, but Tony was too worried about what might happen. 

The only thing that stopped him was that Tony was  _ right. _ Thunderslime might use him to hurt Tony. Harley knew that if that happened, then, Tony would blame himself. That he would do whatever Thunderfail demanded if he threatened him. Tony didn't care if the sad sack of a General threatened to throw him in jail, but a threat aimed at Harley? 

That was the only thing that kept him in his room, working on Luck-E. He couldn't put Tony through that.

He carried on monitoring the situation, however, from multiple avenues. Some FRIDAY knew about, others she did not. He was 17, and even she occasionally treated him like a kid. She would keep certain information from him that he needed to know.

Then Tony went  _ dark.  _

He missed their scheduled call, which did  _ occasionally _ happen. It wasn't unheard of. Especially when things were as chaotic as they were right now, so he could understand. Even though Tony usually sent a text to tell him why he was late. Even though Tony knew Harley was a ball of rage-fueled anxiety over what was happening right now. How Harley was paranoid and scared for Tony's health anytime he was stuck with Captain Frisbee. How he was waiting for an update on Uncle Rhodey. The last he heard from Tony was that he was still in surgery, that they didn't know if he would walk again.

Then another miss. Just silence.

Another day. Not even word from Captain Blueballs.

Friday eventually updated him on Uncle Rhodey's condition. When he came out of the last surgery, that the doctors were quite optimistic about his outcome. She edged around any questions of permanent injury, which told Harley enough. Right now, he was in a medically induced coma to allow his body to heal. FRIDAY mentioned that there were hopes that when the swelling went down, things would have a better outlook. She didn't say the words, but Harley had always been good at reading between the lines when FRIDAY spoke to him.

It made Tony's absence even more  _ glaring. _

Tony and Rhodey were  _ brothers; being _ related didn't matter, found family matters just as much as those you were born with. Harley knew that because they had brought him into that family. Nothing could convince Harley that Tony would not be in that hospital room. Not for so long.

Another day.

He could understand Tony leaving for a few hours if he felt something important required him, but Tony would go straight back. He would camp out in that room. Her pitch a damned tent. He would ignore anyone telling him that visiting hours were over. No way would Tony leave his brother to wake up alone when he could potentially have a life-altering injury he was obviously going to blame himself for.

Which was when FRIDAY caved and told him Tony was  _ missing.  _

Harley dumped his work immediately and started working on the problem. It was 15 days since Tony went dark when he stopped trying to track Tony. That's what everyone else was doing anyway, and he started trying to track Captain Mayo. He had a video from FRIDAY of Tony of the raft, talking to Wilson. He knew that Tony left to fight The Winter Core. A potential world threat that Steve 'Wonderbread' Rogers had decreed only  _ he _ could stop, of course. Tony, trusting that, even after  _ everything _ had happened, had gone to help.

Tony had gone to help his  _ friends _ in a  _ damaged suit. _

He had checked himself out of the hospital against medical advice to help Steve 'safest hands are fucking mine' Rogers on his one-man quest to save the world. Tony had left, hoping that he could bring them in and fix everything.

Tony had gone to help them, and he had never been seen again.

He went back through the Not-a-Captain's damage reports on his gear. The criminal-vengers might have turned off the tracking equipment in their gear, but the damage report system ran separately from the constant tracking system. It only became active when damage was recorded, with a timestamp and location of where the damage occurred.

For some reason, the Star-Spangled-Fuckwit was in the ocean and fighting someone he assumed. Which was odd; that was where the Raft was.  _ That he definitely knew absolutely nothing about.  _ Fucking creepy, illegal looking underwater prisons aside… Harley was pretty sure he hadn't been caught. If he had, it would have been by Tony, and he was still missing. 

Harley figured that was someone else's job right now and that finding Tony was more critical than Wonderboy vs Thunderpillock's smackdown on the creeptastic underwater,  _ totally legal looking _ , prison. He did quietly remotely reboot the tracking system in their gear, however, so FRIDAY could potentially do something about that at some point. Then he started working backwards through the reports until he found something that FRIDAY  _ didn't _ already know. Something that might lead him to Tony.

_ Siberia.  _

Now he had coordinates. 

He could tell someone, but then they'd freeze him out because he was a kid. Fifteen days, it was unlikely Tony was still in Siberia, but he could find clues. Clues the others might miss if they froze him out. Like they had with this. He'd check it out first. Then he'd tell Pepper about Siberia. 

Getting to Siberia, now that was tricky, especially without FRIDAY realising what he was doing, but it didn't exactly take him long to come up with a plan. Telling Pepper that he needed to get out, do something because he couldn't handle this waiting. She was suffering too, and something to do was good for her. 

It felt like virtually no time and too much time. Then he was hugging his sister and mom goodbye and flying to England. He'd already found a kid in England who desperately wanted in on the program he had signed up for, but couldn't afford it. Had created a program that would generate responses based on him that would adapt and change for the kid to pass on. He didn't think he'd be gone for long, but Harley always liked to plan for any eventuality.

Which was how he'd ended up here. In Siberia, parking the vehicle that had zipped him across the white landscape until the bunker came into view. 

Fuck Siberia was  _ cold.  _ Tony hated the cold. Which just made him madder at Crapsicle.

He didn't just storm in like a certain Dorito shaped blockhead. Harley was smart about it. He scanned the place, he checked it out, and he was pretty sure the place was empty before he even walked into the bunker. He was cautious; the thick concrete and blast doors meant that his tech couldn't pick up heat signatures in some areas, so he was careful… until he started seeing the damage. When he saw it, he couldn't look away.

It was almost as if he could track the damage and see the fight in his mind as he numbly walked through the base, getting angrier and angrier as he went. Tony had definitely gotten into a fight here. And Captain Criminal walked away to commit even more crime, whilst Tony vanished. Captain Morales and Honesty hadn't bothered to tell anyone where Tony was, where he had  _ abandoned _ him, in this freezing concrete box.

Harley was pretty sure that even though Tony had arrived to fight five super soldiers… He thinks it was two in the end.

Especially after he finds the Cryo-chambers with the remains of the dead Winter Core inside.

The fight was  _ brutal _ on the bunker; the damage in some areas was severe. He has to wonder  _ what had happened. _ Harley knew enough about what Tony had in his most recent armour that he could recognise damage and match it up to different weapons. The Iron Man armour was more than a match for two super-soldiers, after all. Tracking the fight to where it presumably ended didn't help much. Not that he had expected to find Tony here, at least, he had hoped not to. Not after so long. Harley's operating theory was that someone had taken advantage of the opportunity created by Captain Feckless and had kidnapped him. It wasn't exactly a stretch; Tony dealt with kidnapping attempts the same way people deal with telemarketers. 

The floor was cracked and stained with what could be blood. He was crouched down, trying to work out if the stains were blood or not, and how much blood Tony might have lost when someone practically appears out of nowhere several feet behind him.

"Well, what do we have here then! I  _ told _ Dracker someone would come. Didn't think I'd be catching myself a kid, though." 

"I'm not a kid." 

"Course you aren't, you looking for Iron man, are you? Oh, I just  _ bet _ you are. You a fan? No, I don't think so. See,  _ no one _ else has come here yet. No one has even a clue where to look! I've been watching, you see. Watching them heroes and geniuses running round like headless chickens. Watching as the so-called heroes of Earth and this new council have  _ no clue _ where their Ironman has gone. Even though I  _ know _ that  _ three _ people walked out of here. What does that say about them, hmm? Not a lot if I say so myself, and I do. Kings and Captains not living up to their moral hype is just my cuppa tea. So I thought, it might be cold as balls, but it would be  _ interesting _ to see who made it here first. So, I'm saying you are closer than a fan. Much closer. Tony Stark didn't use protection? You a little hidden bastard?" 

"Fuck off you creepy bastard." 

Great. Harley had graduated to the point of life with superheroes that he had villains monologuing at him.

"Just as mouthy as him. I can see it. Can definitely see it. Smart enough, too. To get here so fast, and on your tod! Very interesting." 

Harley glanced around, trying to work out how to get out of this situation. He'd brought a number of devices with him, but he didn't get much further before something sharp hit his neck from the shadows to his left.

He reached up and ripped the dart out, but things were already getting hazy. Fuck, that was fast-acting. The man who was talking at him was suddenly a lot fucking closer, but his arms and legs were heavy; he couldn't even attempt to swing and punch that smirk off of his face.

"Sorry kid, you seem close to Stark, and see, he's a dangerous lil fucker for a baseline human. Scrappy bastard. Gotta say that impresses me, in this world of suped-up soldiers and shit, how he fucked over so many plans. A survivor that one. How the fuck he was even alive when I picked him up, I got no clue. See now. I's can't be risking you being cut from the same cloth-" 

He blinks, and things get hazy again as the idiot carried on droning even if he wasn't listening. Next time he manages to force his attention, they're in a different room, and there were a lot more of these fuckers with guns. His hands were cuffed behind him, and he was being dragged somewhere by three other people as the bastard, who apparently still couldn't shut up, was looking through the bag that he had brought with him—whistling impressively. 

"You'sa dangerous little bastard? Isn't ya? I think I know exactly where I'm going to send you. I know just the place, and I bet I can make quite the stash of dosh of y-" 

With that, everything went black.

* * *

Harley didn't know how long he was asleep, but he woke up in a fucking tiny cell of all places. His head felt heavy, everything had a soft edge to it, and his mouth tasted like ass. There were people all around him in different states of distress. He could only see a few cells right in front of him unless he pulled himself up into the front corner. That was when he realised he was in more trouble than he had first conceived. The room was huge, and there were cells as far as he could see. The sheer number of people he could see in this place made him nervous. This wasn't some brand new operation. 

This was a place where God knows how many people disappeared, and no one knew he was even missing.

They were fed once a day. Every day some people vanished, others took their place. Not one or two, a lot of people were being moved daily. The turnover was fast. Harley had never seen a cell empty for more than a few  _ hours, _ and that didn't help the sick feeling in his gut that he was in trouble.

_ No one talked.  _

He tried, but that usually got the cells hit with shock batons, so no one ever replied to him. It meant he didn't know where these people came from. He didn't know who captured them. He didn't know what country they were from, or even what country they were in. He didn't like how so many people were vanishing through this place. He focused on gathering information. That's what Tony always told him. Tony had been getting routinely kidnapped since he was in preschool, so he would know what to do in this situation.

Tony had tried to prepare him for something like this potentially happening. Not that he had thought it would. Tony had so many safeguards so that people wouldn't even know he existed to kidnap, but he still talked about it. Told him what to do. Told him to stay quiet, to watch. To listen. To learn. Even though Tony admitted sometimes talking helped, but it usually ended up with broken bones, so he had told him to take everything in and give them nothing.

He wasn't sure exactly how long he was there, the days were blending together, and the mealtimes weren't always adhered to. He had overheard that someone called Dracker was apparently trying to sell him to something called HEAP, and they were arguing on  _ prices, _ for fuck's sake.

Tony was going to kill him for ending up in this situation without anyone knowing he was even gone. 

He figured it was a few weeks of this cramped, boring place. Maybe longer, it was hard to keep track of the days after the first couple of weeks. Hard to stay vigilant and on watch when there was nothing, just silence and aches from the cramped cage. Faces changed so often that he would go to sleep and wake up facing a new person every time. Loads of people had left since he had first woken up; the people in the cells in front of him had been replaced so often, to the point Harley could barely remember what they looked like day-to-day. 

He would just wake up to new people, and then they'd be taken, then others came. He didn't know why he seemed to be stuck here, but assumed it was because Dracker was haggling.

Trying to put a positive spin on it, he used it as a chance to monitor the guards. Everyone else was gone in under a week so the guard rotations were not as varied as they should be for long term imprisonment. It meant he recognised every single guard and had a few vague ideas about them.

Harley couldn't work out much, but the guards would talk around them occasionally. It was like they forgot they were people who could understand what they were saying. Or they didn't care as the people barely stayed long enough to hear anything significant. It didn't tell him much, but he knew that most of the people were going to the same place. Occasionally people were sent to other places, but at least 80% of them were going to the same place. HEAP. Or 'To the Heap'. Harley wasn't sure if it was an acronym or a strange name, but then Harley hadn't known much about human trafficking before finding himself in a cage.

Eventually, they came for him. He had watched every time someone was removed from cells, he knew how the procedure worked, and he had been formulating his best chance to slip by. He knew the code to get out of the door in the left quadrant, which went directly out to a car park of some kind. He knew it was outside as he had seen the sun or the dark of the night sky when people were taken out. He just needed to avoid letting them cuff him, and he might have a chance. 

Unfortunately, they were treating him as if he were Tony Stark.

So it was just his fucking luck when they darted him long before they opened the fucking door, so again his world went black before anyone even approached the lock. 

* * *

"He's known to 186A, like his kid or some shit? Not a damned clue. Cost enough. Be interesting to see if he recognises him. We still don't know the extent of his ability to remember. He has resisted several of our best information gatherers. If he does recognise the kid… the kid could be a way of controlling him. Seeing as you have failed to produce anything consistent." 

"You decided it should be moved to the barracks, don't blame me." 

"Because I didn't want you to fucking kill him! He was valuable  _ before _ he fucking showed a talent in magic! You haven't given me a single person with abilities comparable to his or the Avengers pet which, even though you  _ swore _ you could. He is one of the highest valued assets in this joint, and he's still new and only obeys orders half the time. He is bringing in three times how much we're charging for the top five. We had to take him out of the rankings because no one could put him down. I won't have you adding him to your  _ collection _ . Not when he is so valuable to _me._

"Even though he follows some instructions, we need something more, or the higher class handlers will pass on him.  _ This _ is more. So  _ don't _ kill this one. I let you get away with a lot Dr Anderson, fuck this up, and you'll find things might not be to your liking anymore. Any asset that I claim as mine and you let them live, that was our deal, remember? 186A and this one? They're mine."

"I can't predict how the experiment will react. I've told you that a hundred times. Although, I do have an idea that I've been wanting to try. Don't you worry, headmaster. I have a plan, dump it in the cells, fetch me 186A." 

The drugs still have him foggy, so instead of talking, he listened. He had a horrible feeling they were talking about Tony. As a number. That his memories were gone? What was fuck was this place? Was this HEAP?

* * *

It was three lots of food, although the intervals seemed strange, before he was taken from the pitch dark, windowless cells and back to the medical room, that he only vaguely remembered. That room had been a place of horrors when he was half drugged out of his brain, and he couldn't work out if he was worried or just happy for a chance to get out of the dark. Listening to the muffled screams from the other cells… people yelling, banging, slamming, then silence for hours, before it all started up again. Just darkness all around him. This place was madness-inducing.

He never saw anyone back there, and when they pulled him out, the black metal doors of each cell had no screen. The guards' faces were covered. Harley couldn't tell if he had the same guards twice, and when he was in the black cell, he saw no one. Even the food was delivered through the slots… 

The only person whose face he saw was Dr Crank. 

This place was run better than the previous location. Everything Tony had told him to look for in a kidnapping had come up blank. No one was asking him to do anything. No one was asking for payment. He was just left in a pitch dark cell, surrounded by God knows how many people, going through who knows what. He didn't know how much of it was real or if some of it was designed that way to break him down. Even the strangely timed intervals of food were carefully managed to throw him off balance. Add that to the sensory deprivation, spliced with intervals in the too white, too bright lab… Even though he logically understood what they were doing, it didn't stop it being effective.

The medical room was just as horrific as he remembered, and he tried to fight as they strapped him down. Sinking his teeth into one of the guards wrists got him a swift, hard crack to the temple that left him reeling. It also got him gagged, so all he could do was glare. The bindings didn't move an inch when he struggled. At least he managed to hurt one of the bastards.

"Got a wild one here for you today doc, what you gonna give the brat. Something painful, I hope, fucking little shit bit me!" 

"This one's a special case. We have to go slow, make sure it lives."

"Well, that seems boring." 

"On the contrary. This will be wonderful for my research."

The guard moved behind him, although, from the steps Harley counted, he did not leave the room as the doctor turned to speak to a different person in a white coat.

"Set up a cannula whilst I collect everything." 

Now, Harley had managed to remain calm, ever since he woke up in a fucking cell. He'd been pissed. He'd been concerned. But as he felt the needle slip into his elbow, he felt a real trickle of fear. Not that he showed it. He glared as a man took several vials of blood from him before attaching him to an IV. He had no idea how the fuck he was going to get out of this, and he had no idea what these people even wanted from him.

He felt nothing at first, but then… He slowly started heating up. Then the room began to spin. From that point, his memories came in snatches. 

Like those photo booths where you get four photos on a strip. Nothing was tangible, and time moved quickly and slowly at the same time. 

Strapped in the white room. 

The floor of his pitch dark cell. 

Burning, burning, burning hot and pain. 

Screaming, not sure if it was others in the cells around him, or in his head.

Memories of his sister, blended as if she was here. He remembered someone begging and laughter. 

Dreaming of Tony, fuck he hoped he wasn't actually here whilst he somehow had memories of him being there with him. Although in his clear moments, he knew that his family hadn't been here. That he had been in this black cell alone. His overheated brain was grasping at straws. People were around him, even though he knew they weren't; it was like someone amped up the delirium when you have a high fever.

Cannulas and IV bags of different colours came and went. He barely remembered half of it, but somehow he knew he had been to that room several times. Like his mind might not remember, but something in him  _ knows. _

He didn't know how long it had been until he was back in medical again, but this time then didn't insert a cannula. His mind was fuzzy, and they gagged him now because he was a known biter and fighter even when he was delirious. More so when he was delirious, actually. 

Also, he didn't shut up after he realised that they didn't want something from him; they just wanted  _ him _ . 

Personally, Harley thought that was his best quality. Considering the Doctor also  _ never fucking shut up, _ Harley was pretty sure that they shouldn't complain about his talking. 

"If you survive this, you'll finally be inducted into the Experimental Asset Program!" 

EAP, huh, he wondered what the H was for. It took a few seconds of thinking that before he realised the most likely contender and how fucked he was if he was right.

"Ohhf yaaahy." 

He mumbles out around the gag that's too tight on his face. Hoping the sarcasm travels because the creeptastic mad doctor looks way too fucking happy with himself. 

He doesn't respond. The doctor talks at him a lot but never acts as if he replies. Calls him 'it' and 'special'. It's enough to make him a bigger dick than the twat that gagged him. Then he sees the size of that needle and fuck, this is going to hurt. The pain in his leg is bad enough that he whites out for a second there, but he comes back enough to see what he's doing—injecting something into his bone marrow.

"Now, usually I'd just give you the entire dose, maybe two. But the headmaster has plans for you, so we'll be doing this the long way in the hope that you won't burn up and die like the other couple of hundred people before you. Magic is a tricky thing you see; the human body just doesn't know what to do with it. If you live, you will be my second success!" 

Harley wishes he could blackout, so that he didn't have to listen to this guy any more.

* * *

His body feels different every day in tiny increments. Some days he's too out of it to feel anything at all; other days, he's hypersensitive to everything. He can't keep track of the days anymore. His mind feels slow and fast, all at once. He gives up counting how many meals come and go. He gives up trying to work out the timed intervals between each meal. He gives up trying to recognise different guards. He gives up trying to work out what the noises behind that black door are. He just wants to fucking sleep, and he can't even do that.

* * *

"Well, it survived. No idea if it will take. Brand it." 

He thought after the bone marrow shit that nothing could hurt more. He was wrong. So fucking wrong.

"Well done, 592A. Take him to the cells and monitor him." 

* * *

They leave him alone after that, strangely. The brand on his arm makes him queasy, but as his mind slowly comes back after whatever the fuck they gave him, he starts cataloguing differences. He heals fast, which he is beyond thankful for as it doesn't seem to take long before his arm slowly stopped burning and feeling came back to parts of it that had gone numb. He can't see what it is, the room is still pitch black, but he traces it when it healed enough. 592A. Wrapping his head around that is too much for him to deal with right now, so he moved on.

He's taller, and he'd already been tall before he landed himself in this Hell pit of madness. He had been 5"11 after his last growth spurt, much to Tony's irritation, but now he's even taller. His head isn't far off the top of the doors, and he can't lie flat out on the bed anymore; that's interesting. It's like he just went through that growth spurt in high school all over again, but this ain't natural.

He's definitely stronger; everything… feels more intense. Reading people seems to be disturbingly easy and utterly dull. Even though the guards are still masked, even though they all  _ look _ the same. Fuck, even when they don't open the door, he  _ knows _ which guard passes him. Not a lot of information, but he knows things that help him tell them apart. He now knows that there are fourteen regular guards with seven people who switch off occasionally.

Harley had figured he'd been given some variety of the super-soldier serum, or something, except for the way he seems to  _ know _ what people are going to do. Knows who they are despite the extensive lengths they've gone to make all the guards look the same. It doesn't work all the time, but it's definitely weird. 

Then he sees a wisp of silver dance around his fingers. 

This isn't some serum like Captain Good-Steroids got. This is something so much  _ more.  _ This is something that makes him think of that mind-reading Scarlett-Bitch that fed off people's fear. Try as he might, he can't read people's minds. Something in him is thankful for that, even though it could have been something that would help him escape this place. He doesn't want to be inside any of their minds, especially not these sick twisted fucks.

Knowing a guard is intending to go to the pub later isn't precisely information that he could use to get him out of this place, though.

He can't freak out, so instead, he slips deep into hyperfocus and over days, the silver gets stronger. He tries to hide it from the guards, but eventually, he's spotted. The silver is bright and stands out in the pitch-dark cell. So he finds himself strapped down in the white room,  _ again. _ He can read the doctor better now, much more than previous times, but the information is useless to him strapped down as he is. Even with his increased strength, he can't budge an inch. That should have been obvious; why create people you can't control? This isn't a new operation. The number on his arm told him that, especially now he knows barely even a third of experiments even make it to that stage, let alone progress through the program.

"592A! Wonderful, you're progressing just as I planned. Another week and we'll process you." 

He tells him to go fuck himself from behind the gag. Even though he never listens, it makes Harley feel better. At least he'll see Tony soon. He's pretty sure 186A is Tony; it  _ has _ to be. The way they talk about him. It  _ sounds _ like Tony. Tony will have a plan, and then they can blow this joint. Hopefully literally.

* * *

Several more days went by in a blur of pain and delirium, but every time he woke up. Every time his mind was clear enough to think, he noticed that the silver was  _ stronger. _ He's not sure what to do with it yet, but he hopes that he'll make them regret giving it to him. 

It goes from stuttering sparks that he can barely see, onto thick ribbons that wrap around his fingers. It goes from a few seconds to a few minutes to what Harley is sure is hours as he lies back on the bed, his hands held above him, and the silver  _ burns _ brightly through the pitch-darkness that had become most of his life when he isn't in the blinding white of the lab.

Time moves as he goes back and forth, and Harley wonders if he'll ever leave this place.

One day, when his stomach has him damned sure that food was significantly late. Days late, maybe. No matter the whacky schedule, he had never quite gotten this hungry before, so he is comfortable thinking food is late. Instead of the slot opening, Harley jerks up as the door opens instead. Fully expecting to be dragged to the medical room again, he was surprised when the guards had intentions to go left.

The medical room was to the right. They go down 4 flights of stairs, and the chill slowly picks up in the air. Great, being underground made escaping trickier.

This time he was dragged to a room with someone screaming in it.  _ This _ must be where the worst of the screaming comes from, at least. The screaming in the medical room was usually  _ different.  _ It's close enough to the cells, but far enough away for the fact that the screaming reached him upstairs to concern him.

The chair looks awful, but he's held securely in place, gagged and bound as he watches a man thrash to try and get free. It's the first time he has seen other people. You never saw the guards' faces. All the medics wear masks, apart from Dr Creepazoid. It seems strange, seeing other people after what felt like years. He logically knew it wasn't, but everything in this place was designed to fuck with you, and it just feels weird seeing other people again. The fact they're being processed like this doesn't help that feeling of wrongness.

These people are like him. They are wearing the same grey or faded black short-sleeved shirt and trousers that looks like a prison uniform that had seen better days. They have the same brands on their left arms. One is struggling next to him, watching the man in the chair screaming; panic was coming off the standing man so loudly that it was giving him a headache. 

There is another person on the opposite side of the room, standing in front of a black stone corridor that goes somewhere new. He isn't chained up, he isn't cuffed, and a guard isn't holding him in place. The guards barely seem to realise he is still there. He ranks so low on their threat index, Harley can feel that the guards are 100% certain that they do not need to monitor that person. 

He looks… Harley isn't sure, but he feels different from the rest of the people in this room. His intentions are like... mulch. Soft, fragmented and fleeting. A bare second of deciding to walk straight ahead, and it's gone. He barely notices the screaming behind him, and he doesn't seem to register the guards. He's just... staring at the wall. No, he's not starting at the wall; the wall just happens to be there; he isn't looking at anything. All Harley can get from him is compliance. Compliance is good. Resistance is fucking futile.

He has a feeling he's looking at the 'after' with that guy. Somehow it's worse than the screaming man. How the fuck is he meant to escape if they take away the knowledge that he needs to escape? How is he meant to find Tony if they take away his memories of Tony? How could he find Tony if he doesn't know who fucking Harley was?

None are as chained up or gagged like him; if he wasn't watching a person screaming in a chair that he thinks is going to fuck with his memories and turn his intentions to mulch, he might enjoy the fact he had screwed with them enough to warrant such measures.

Even if they didn't have him bound as much as he had, he doesn't struggle. Not like he has every other time. He  _ can't. _ Not watching that. Not watching what they were going to do to him. He's frozen. He can hardly think past the fact he can feel those men's intentions, feel them deaden, and that sheer expanse of nothingness is somehow louder than any screaming has ever been.

That screaming and the pain isn't even the part that fills him with cold dread as he watches the proceedings. It was how the man blinked around, confused, and what he said when they removed the bit from his mouth.

"Ready to comply." 

He watches two more people follow the same pattern before it's his turn. Each time his senses sharpen, and he picks up more. He observes how they don't recognise the guards or their location. He feels their intentions be burned out of them and are replaced with a heavy thrum of compliance. Compliance. Compliance.

All he has is hope, hope that they brought him here for a reason. That reason is Tony. He has no idea how, but he at least knows he won't be alone. Even if he forgets everything that he is. He tries to bring up memories, his mom, his sister, Tony, Rhodey, Pepper, Happy. Family. To have them in his mind, maybe one last time.

Harley knows he is stronger now, but as they force him forward, he finds that these guards seem to be as affected by his fighting as if he were an actual kid. These guards are not the ones who bring them food, not the ones who took him to the medical room. They're different, and Harley is pretty sure they're enhanced. He doesn't know how to use the silver magic to his advantage yet. There are five of them, one of him, he is weak, hungry, and he is still adjusting to the changes his body has gone through and has spent who knows how long being psychologically fucked with. 

He doesn't stand a chance, and he knows it, but what else can he do. In seconds he's strapped in. 

Then it's pain, pain, pain and then… nothing. Soft. Floating. 

Obedience is good. 

Compliance is good. 

Assets that comply require less recalibration. 

_ Assets that comply require less recalibration.  _

Asset 592A will comply. 

"Ready to comply."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did that thing where I had a smart alec idea again. It added time and 1500 odd words to this chapter, and I have no idea how besides insomnia. At 5 am, I strongly felt that Harley dislikes using the same insult twice. Thankfully the Anti Steve Rogers chat helped me come up with suggestions!
> 
> There are so many people following along this time! If you are new, my goal is a chapter a day. But this time the chapters are a lil chonkier! I'm figuring 2 or 3 days at most? We'll see!
> 
> And no one caught the sneakily hidden Arc reactor in chapter 1! 
> 
> ⎊✪


	3. Discovery

**-Tony POV-**

His Soldier stopped Silver from pushing on with his story. Stopped him and nudged Dax to distract him. Tony noted all of that with a sense of detachment as the information settled into his mind.

A few things in Silver's story had confirmed assumptions he had held for a while now. Silver's magic _had_ come directly from him. All of his serums had, in fact, come from him within his first year, which was an impressive amount in itself. Which likely meant Silver had gained a low dose of Extremis from him. Something Tony was so fucking happy for, because if the Weasel had done to Silver precisely what he had done to him? At least with the formulas Mal A through C, then Tony knows that his chance of survival was barely noticeable. The Weasel had never been able to isolate the version of Extremis he had, but then it directly mutated his DNA rather than being a separate serum like the man seemed to prefer.

Silver seemed to have more coherent memories of his times in the black cells too. Tony's were quite muddled, and he could never be entirely sure that he was remembering something correctly or if it was merely a corrupted memory. Tony had spent quite a long time in those cells, and the Weasel had not been trying to keep him alive. He had been trying his damned hardest to kill Tony and in the name of that quest, had thrown practically everything he had at him, multiple times. Even now, Tony had access to the Weasels real notes. His file was a mess.

So it wasn't too surprising that Silver's early memories were more coherent. It also meant that Tony had more memories that were now like heavyweights in his mind. Silver should not have gone through that. Harley shouldn't have gone through it. He should have been at home with his family, studying and doing... kid things. Not living through hell with him. Not being forced to survive. Not being changed into what they had become.

Tony was definitely trying to keep his mind together out of sheer willpower. Watching Silver chatting calmly with Dax about different types of magic helped, but he'd be lying if he said he was feeling great. The food he had managed to eat before Silver had finally started talking was like a solid lump in his stomach; he felt hot and cold, his mind was trying to splinter to escape what it had heard, but Tony wouldn't let it. He would not break over that because then Silver would blame himself.

The Fracture he had already suffered had very nearly rendered him down to the second iteration of Gold. Tony knew this. He was slowly building himself back up, but even he admitted that he wasn't entirely there yet. The only reason he was as together as he was? His Soldiers magic, healing and soothing pain constantly throughout their hunt for Silver. Then Silver and his Soldier had patched some of the cracks in his mind, covering those sharp edges that cut him up, that made him bleed.

Tony was surprised that something worse hadn't happened during their hunt, or even when Silver had started talking. That his Soldier had managed to keep him with them all this time was impressive given he was working in reverse. Tony couldn't not trust Silver, really. Ingratiate yourself with the skimmed back persona, and the one built on top sort of inherited it. Tony had built himself up by the time he met his Soldier properly. His Soldier hadn't had that 'in'0. Yet, he had still held him together and in place.

That he hadn't walked out and vanished into the night? Looking for someone, something to hunt? He was happy, but surprised. From the last full fracture he dealt with, he had lost months to that drive before he surfaced in any meaningful manner.

That drive was still there. Worse now, maybe, even though he _knew_ that he had slaughtered his way through Hydra. It wasn't enough. It would never be enough. It was like a ticking clock under his skin, and he needed to do something...

"Tony?"

He jerked slightly; he was still leaning back against his soldier, who had him held in place, but his mind was drifting. He wasn't trapping him, but his strong arms holding him in place actually helped. It was the only thing keeping him calm and in place right now. It took a few tries to get a word out, and his voice was harsher than expected.

"Yeah?"

"I can feel what's going on in your head. You can't keep doing this to yourself."

He didn't know _how_ to stop it. He didn't know if he _should_ stop it.

"Focus on the now; focus on the fact you have your Silver home. That we're safe. We're home. Tell me what you need."

Anyone else and Tony might have brushed them off, but his Soldier _knew_ what it was like to drown in guilt for things done with your body but not your will.

"I… "

"Don't overthink, just right now, what do you need to get through the next minute."

"Data. I need the data from the job."

His Soldier didn't release him, but he did stretch off to the side to grab something. When he felt something pressed into his hands, he had to think for a few seconds before he recognised what it was. Flicking the tablet on, he realised this was his Soldier's tablet. Everything that FRIDAY had digitally recovered from the job was in a folder. Part of it was already neatly organised into folders with notes attached from the work his Soldier had started on the way home.

"Anything else?"

Tony shook his head and leaned back further, his Soldiers arms tightening slightly in response to the unasked request. Tony wasn't good at asking for help on a typical day, Gold was awful at it, but he managed that much. Asking for help was still pretty new to him; it wasn't his first, second or third response to a situation. His Soldier somehow heard the question and made Tony know he wasn't going anywhere without voicing it. That made it easier for him to accept that help.

Loading up the first file to start combing through allowed him to let go of the breath he hadn't realised that he was holding. His eyes switching from the tablet to his family scattered across the penthouse and back again helped. It would be better if everyone were here. If he had everyone within his sights, but this was something as his soldier ran his hand through his hair, black magic flickering to life warmed him to his core. It felt like it was melting the ice that had frozen in his chest.

This Serpent Society was strange; it had been strange before they knew it had a different name; now? Now Tony was downright paranoid. His Soldier's tablet was very well organised, however, which meant he could bring up individual documents and compare them with what they had on not only Hydra's current activities, but multiple other operations they were currently monitoring. Hydra was haemorrhaging, but there were a few scattered operations here and there. They weren't coordinating well, and certain factions were busy attacking each other whilst his team cleaned up the stragglers. That was partially their doing, but it wasn't in Hydra's nature to trust, not even different cells within the same organisation.

Even so, Tony wanted to know if this strange organisation was connected to any of the Hydra factions still remaining. Then they'd branch out; he had a few contacts that had worked for Hydra, but had not been Hydra that he jotted down with the intention of pulling their files.

It was that or pace, and that tended to put everyone on edge. He had put down that impulse since returning; out of everyone, Silver would certainly recognise it for what it was. His Soldier might pick up pieces, but Silver knew that side of him on a more… visceral level than his current family. Tony was just wondering how long before his Soldier or Dax started asking Silver about things in the Charnel House, about him. 

Tony didn't mind, out of anyone, he trusted them with that side of him. Maybe he should have spoken about it before now. Perhaps he shouldn't have just shoved it all down with blood and vengeance. Maybe this Fracture wouldn't have hit him so severely that it kicked him back to how he was exciting the medical base. Rhodey might have been right, but Tony just had not wanted to rehash the past that haunted him. The loss of Silver and Snipe was too much to touch upon. 

Gold had anchored _everything_ in them, from his survival to his sanity.

Pacing for Tony meant he was itching for a knife usually. Or a fight. Silver had compared him to a caged tiger on more than one occasion. When something happened that had tripped his control and the gold in his mind was _rage_ and _fire_ and _need_. That had usually resulted in him pushing too hard and ending up in solitary, or on lockdown, but there were no guards here. None of his family would lock him in a solitary cell. That meant that Tony had to control himself, to not give into it. 

Not _all_ of it was from hearing Silver's story.

Part of it was because he had been so torn up, so desperate to find him, that they'd broken protocol. That Tony had _allowed_ them to break protocol. That he had practically pushed them into it. The protocols they ran their jobs by had not existed when he broke free, all that mattered was hunting. So, they'd hit the warehouse far, far earlier than they should have, and now Tony was more comfortable in his skin; it was starting to scratch at him. 

Tony knew they hadn't much of a choice. They could only hold him back so much; eventually, he would have gone around them. They had kept him contained, had kept things going at a pace that Gold hadn't taken matters entirely into his own hands.

They hadn't been hurt, they'd all walked out of that job, mostly injury-free, and with Silver, but Tony didn't know whether that was primarily pure luck or something else. Instead of him and his Soldier taking half the building each, with Nat scouting ahead, one of them had stayed with him at all times. So something was off protocol in practically every area because of him. 

So, had it been luck? 

Was it just luck that they hadn't run into a seriously enhanced asset amongst the unenhanced? 

Or was something else at play?

Without properly scoping and combing the information, finding out who these guys really were? They could have walked into a death trap. He might have killed one of the best things to happen to him since walking out of Hydra.

"What are you thinking about?" 

Tony jumped again, not expecting his Soldiers voice to cut through the miasma of conflicting thoughts being chucked around his mind as easily as he did. Pulling him tightly against him to remind him that he was there, alive. His hand slipping back under his shirt in a surge of black and gold crackling magic that made him sigh. That took away the sharp edges. Blunted them. Slowed the beat of the music that was a mess again right now; he was barely hearing a tune for a few seconds, words occasionally sparking with an edge of a memory blurring before it was pulled under and another replaced it.

"The mission, I fucked up."

"Tony, this was an impossible situation. I would have loved to do this properly, but some things are more important. Dragging it out would have hurt you. It would have forced you to go around us, possibly on your own. There is a reason I didn't get in your way when you went to speak to Yar. I'd rather you have back up doing things wrong, than forcing you to do things whilst hiding from us."

"And if they had an enhanced in their ranks? If they had enough weapons and the knowledge on how to use them. If I had walked out of there without Nat. Without you?"

His Soldiers magic surged in response to his own, which slowed his thoughts from the chaotic mess to a slow, golden crawl.

"Breathe."

Tony nodded and forced himself to stay seated, to calm his magic that was inches away from boiling in anger and itching for a target. It was a feeling his Soldier knew and understood himself, something he had dealt with for years whilst collared with The Avengers, and he shared that calm through their magic which allowed him to refocus on the tablet in his hand.

"Better?"

"I'm… closer to Tony now. The songs are still discordant in my mind, but this helps." 

"Good, watching your Silver helps too?" 

"Hmm, Dax and Stiles are quite taken with him. Natka isn't quite sure what to do with him yet. Her mother-hen instincts are just waiting to kick in, though. I think introducing him to Peter will be fun. Having everyone together, that will help." 

His Soldier hummed as he watched Silver, who was explaining something to Dax and Siles; he was all frenetic energy, jumping and waving his arms, smiling wide as he spoke a mile a minute. Dax and Siles were utterly captivated, as was Natka, who was a few feet away at the new table. It was bigger than the one he had trashed, which Tony liked; it was also currently covered entirely with weapons.

Natka liked to clean their weapons when she was stressed, and they had amassed an impressive array of weapons between them. She had been a solid pillar of calm this entire time, not allowing herself to be anything else. It was only after the fact that she would allow herself to feel anything but the pure laser focus required for their mission. Tony could feel her desire for Sam to visit; it was sharp across his senses that were still raw from being exposed to the Weasel.

"He's like this… gangly Bambi version of you. I can see your training in how he moves. There's less grace than you have; you move like water, you dance, Doll." 

He couldn't help a smile at that as he felt himself relaxing by small degrees. The itch to hunt being slowly worn down by his Soldier, who had learned shockingly quickly how to manoeuvre around his more dangerous moods.

"Flatterer." 

"Truth though, it's good to have you back, Tony. Although I was surprised how much trust you put in me when you were closer to Gold." 

He dropped the tablet at that and turned around. If there was anyone he had trusted during that hunt for Silver, it had been his Soldier. Anytime his mind pulled apart, and he forgot, anytime he didn't recognise his people, his Soldier had pulled him back. His magic recognised him. Gold had felt his desire when he first entered the apartment, and... it had thrown him. Before he even left the lift, his Soldier had held one substantial desire to help him. To get to him. To be near him and help him. To kill whoever had hurt him. To make them pay and suffer. 

Usually, people have hundreds of desires at any one time. Moving up and down, conscious to unconscious, realistic to farcical, from every facet of life. But his Soldier had been like a shining, guiding light through a storm, his magic had been a lifeline, and even though he had not known him, he had trusted him.

"Why? Of course, I trust you. There aren't many on this earth that can understand me, fuck, I don't understand my own mind most days. You seem to understand it better than me. It doesn't work like any human mind I've ever seen before, yet you just _see_ which pieces are forward, you know what Gold needed, you gave me what I needed to stay in control. The other options, I told you about what happened _in_ that medical base, parts of it, but not directly _after._ What happens _after_ a fracture. That break, and those I had during the Charnel house, either end in blood or kneeling. You kept me standing." 

His soldier doesn't do what he feared, which was immediately starting to ask questions he doesn't exactly know how to answer yet. The parts of the Charnel House, and those months after he was freed before he met up with FRIDAY. Not including the blackouts, it was a mess. Having spoken about more than he ever thought he would to his soldier already, that it hadn't sent him running for the hills, Tony doesn't immediately write off the idea of someday adding in parts he missed, glossed over or parts where he let people draw their own conclusions that he never corrected. He just hopes that it doesn't change how he sees him.

He is interested, Tony can feel that, but Tony can also feel that he is willing to wait as he slipped his hand from Tony's hair to his face. Resting his fingers across where the blindfold lay as a reminder that it’s gone.

Another thing Tony didn't have to tell him, just something he seemed to know would help, and it quickly became something that comforted him. The rage isn't gone, it's simmering under the surface, but his Soldier is steadily redirecting it until more of his attention shifted to his Soldier than elsewhere.

"Gold never knew me though, our magic, sure. But Gold doesn't know me. When you're ready, you can tell me anything about that time. I'm not going to rush you to talk about that. I could feel your unease when Silver was talking about Ketch. We have time now, Tony." 

Tony gently moved the pieces in his mind; it was still close to a Fracture, so it probably was not wise to access other parts of his mind. He didn't slip into the mindset; he just had a look, to see if anything had changed. It had, and he found he was not surprised. Gold wasn't a separate personality; he was just a different side of him. Him with certain parts stripped back. His sides tended to affect him, get practically any iteration of Gold to trust you, and Tony would move heaven and Earth for you. Get in at that lower level, and it was as intrinsic as breathing for Tony to trust. Luckily for him, Gold rarely handed out that trust.

"He does now; he marked you down as 'Ally', 'Kind' and 'Parameters not required.' That you are essential." 

His Soldier looked softly amazed at what he said, which made the small headache completely worth it. It also brought his hunger back to his attention, not something he could deal with right now, but he could lean heavily against his soldier, which helped. Proximity and mixing magic with his Soldier, it definitely helped along with sifting through his desires, something Tony found calming.

"I'm happy; I am here for all sides, all pieces of your mind." 

"Even if I am malfunctioning? I don’t know if I can ever return to what I was. The chair took things from me, things that aren't coming back. It doesn't matter how many times Sam explains the concept of traumatic memories. I understand them logically now, but.." 

"I understand; give yourself time. You aren't malfunctioning Tony, your learning how to live with what was done to us. No one is rushing you. Dax and Siles have known you for a while now, and they aren't going anywhere, are they? Dax casts Wards primarily now from your language." 

His soldier gently turned his head so he could see Silver, who was now sat next to Natka and talking rapidly to her about different weapons on the table. From what Tony could pick up, he was recommending certain upgrades for her favourite gun, and Tony couldn't help smiling at that. Natka had an indulgent smile as she listened whilst Dax and Siles were pitching in to help with the weapons cleaning. Tony could feel her own desires tentatively shifting in a way that made him think of a protective mother… a mountain lion mother, but still a mother.

"Huh, I suppose not." 

"And what about Pepper and Rhodes, Fire and Lightning. They trusted you enough to augment them." 

Tony blinked as his Soldier turned his head again to see Pepper and Rhodey, who were currently finishing up the dishes in the kitchen. They were still kind of irritated that they had been distracted and delayed during everything that had gone on, but they also accepted that too many people around him when he was closer to a Fractured Gold simply wasn't smart. 

Tony also hadn't quite thought about it like that. He knew he had people here. He knew he had augmented some of them for various reasons. How he was collecting people. They didn't seem to be waiting for a different him to turn up. Siles and Dax didn't even _know_ him from before. 

"Silver is obviously happy to be back. Have you noticed that he keeps you in his sights? He is dealing well with the shock of leaving captivity, but any time his heartbeat increases, he hunts you out and then calms." 

He had noticed that, but then he was also doing the same thing; he needed Silver in his sights just like his Soldier presence helped. Part of him still didn't think it was real. That he was there, that he was in the penthouse. Alive. Safe. _Free._

"Sam will be joining us soon, I think." 

Tony turned back to his Soldier; his eyes were black as his magic was still active and shimmering across his skin. He felt his own shift to a deeper gold in response whilst he had to remind himself _why_ he couldn't just deal with that hunger right now and why he had to wait for later. 

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah, every time the tracking bracelet forces him back to the compound, I can see it in his eyes. He wants to stay. He's happy here. Tash shines when he visits. He's visiting his Aunt right now." 

"Even with the less than legal activities we get involved with?" 

"Tash's been working him up to it. He understands the grey area more than many people give him credit for, especially with how disillusioned he had become over the last few years. He sees how much we get done; he can compare it to what he saw happen when he was on the pure, shiny, good side. He was questioning things long before you got Tash and me out. He knows how much happier she is now; that means a lot to him.

"Then you have your other not quite kid, Peter, despite being all shiny and good, he's snuck into our hunting room for the powered human trafficking rings, you know. He covers his tracks well, but I've caught him a few times." 

"Has he now, huh. Got ourselves quite the family here." 

"Yeah, you do." 

"We do, Darling. You missed your name off of that list. You kept me together when I shattered. _You_ gave Gold something to hold on to. _You_ gave Gold hope, something he doesn't even understand the concept of. You found his Silver. You have two not quite kids now." 

Tony chuckled at the strangled noise his Soldier made at that before swiftly moving on.

"Sometimes, we have to be selfish; you have done so much over the years. What did you tell me in the beginning, when I was recovering from the witch? I deserve good things. Well, so do you; we all do in this little family." 

"I think I can get behind that." 

He felt himself smiling as he carried on sorting through the computer systems. The sharp edges in his mind definitely felt better. It was like his Soldier had given him bricks to build upon—bit by bit as he became steadier and steadier. 

Silver came over and chucked himself at the sofa; he still couldn't sit like a regular person. He always threw himself at furniture like he had a personal grudge against it. It was ridiculous, but it made him smile because there were many parts of him that remembered that trait.

They were in the grey memories from before, in the first iteration. 

Gold remembered the way the bed shook when Silver chucked himself onto it. 

The second iteration of Gold hoarded those memories. 

Now, as Tony, he saw him once again. It was good, solid, like another brick in his mind. 

"I can't get over how you took down Hydra. I remember Weasel panicking about it, but he didn't tell me much. He mostly talked about himself, but you know that. Had to listen to hours of crap to find out any information. Dax was showing me what the world looked like with Hydra in control. Then the reports after you escaped. Did you know you could escape?"

Tony frowned at that, knowing that Silver thought it had been his fault Gold had stayed all those years. Completely missing that he was the only reason Gold had _survived_ those years. Deciding to cut that off before it snowballed into something more, it was easy to do with the truth. 

Whilst Tony had never fully obeyed, had been belligerent, had known the guards feared him for some reason, had known he made the techs nervous and handlers uncomfortable… he had never _known_ why. He hadn't understood what it all meant. They blinded him, but he didn't know why. They treated him worse than other Experiments, but he hadn't known why. He knew he had to plan, to study, to remember, but he had lost the reasons 

That was something that had slipped through the fractures early on. He had lost the knowledge of who Tony Stark was and why that mattered in a place like that.

He knew that he had to hide. He knew he had to learn. To study each and every handler, guard, tech, medics, experiments, and the headmaster. He collected profiles on _everyone_ he came across, and he learned the areas of the Charnel House that he had access to, (and several areas that he really shouldn't have had access to), to an almost obsessive degree. Every nook and pathway, every schedule, every bell.

He had known that he _needed_ to know it all, to plan, but he had lost the _why._ It hadn't lowered the importance; he had known it was vital; he had been diligent in his work, without ever knowing what goal he was working to. Eventually, he had assumed it was to protect Silver and Snipe. He hadn't understood any stray compulsions to leave, because those who he was sworn to protect were already with him.

Sometimes it didn't matter how he hid things in his mind; it didn't matter how he tried to keep the information. Sometimes the chair was stronger. It wasn't like he was faced with two memories, and he had to choose what to keep. He was barely involved with it as time went on. Memories that had more meaning to him seemed to survive. Even then, that wasn't a sure-fire way to keep memories, not with how they used the chain more and more to combat his ability to remember. Sometimes the chair slipped past all of his defences and left him with shredded scraps.

He didn't forget his friends, but he had lost himself early on. As his people had always been more significant to Tony than himself or his own safety.

He had known that he needed to play the long game, and to do that, he had to survive; he just didn't remember _why._ Or even what the long game was.

Occasionally he would get impulses, small glimmers of his own voice telling him to leave, but by then, his first parameters were protection of Silver and Snipe. He had simply thought that the first iteration of himself didn't understand. He hadn't had a Silver to kneel for and protect. Hadn't had a Snipe to settle the confusion of his brain and to ensure he ate. It was only when he lost them both that the beat of _hide, plan, escape_ returned after so many years hidden.

So, this was something he would not let Silver blame himself for.

"No, I knew there was something different about me. The guards feared me; the doctors despised me. But I obeyed; those were my parameters."

"You didn't always obey."

Tony frowned; yes, he had not always obeyed entirely. But even in those early days, he hadn't tried to escape. When he was 186A, he had known he could disobey, he knew how to wind people up, he knew how to flex his power from the bottom of the heap, but he hadn't known he could attempt to escape. 186A only really knew life inside with snatches of hoarded memories from an iteration no longer present. Where else would he go?

Another fact of the Charnel House, Silver had never fully understood that it was one thing for Gold to disobey and hurt, but another to disobey and watch Silver or Snipe suffer. That hurt more than anything the guards could come up with, was worse than any of the Handlers games, surpassed even the Headmaster and Weasels sick, twisted minds. 

The handlers didn't tell Silver in detail just what they _could_ do to Gold and Snipe. Not the way they did to him. Not like how Raylor would list off what he thought were _reasonable_ responses to Gold's actions. They certainly were not reasonable, but it had been more than enough to keep Gold inline—anything to keep Handlers like Raylor away from Silver.

Silver was also mostly blank after a wipe. They didn't _need_ to have multiple points of control over him. Not like they did with Gold.

Raylor had started it, but the handlers that knew about Silver used his existence to collar Gold better than anything else, because he had never cared what happened to himself. No injury was bad enough that Gold wouldn't take amusement from fucking with _anyone_ above him. The Handlers that knew about Silver had different tactics, and he had put them on a scale from Raylor, by far the worst and most imaginative. To Ketch, who never put a hand on Silver, never even suggested he would do as such. If anything, Ketch had helped Gold protect Silver on _multiple_ occasions. Had never demanded obedience or anything in return.

It all boiled down to the fact he couldn't risk continuing how he had begun. Even after years, Gold still found ways to subvert those in control where he could. He just got smarter about it, less obvious, less likely to get caught and risk Silver.

"Those were the parameters."

If anything, that he was forced to obey had lengthened his own life. Even those who didn't know about Silver had to admit he was better behaved in the years after he took Silver and Snipe in. Tony was pretty sure if he had not obeyed for Silver and then Snipe, then he would have been black bagged in under three years at most. He was already starting to burn up after just one year due to his frequent recalibrations. Silver and Snipe calmed him down and because of that, extended his life by years.

"I remember now, what it was like before we met. Had a lot of time at Yar's with little to do but focus on getting my memories back. I _watched_ you, Gold. I watched you vanish on the guards, trick them, send them on wild goose chases. Watched you backtalk and intentionally wind them up. I watched you curse the medics as they strapped you in the chair. Watched the fear on their faces when multiple guards were holding you down. Blinded, Bound and still, you disobeyed. Watched you defy handlers in the pits. I _know_ you only obeyed because of me and Snipe. 

"I remember thinking that the Experiments were at the bottom when it came to the power balance, but no one told you that."

Tony knew that everyone else in the penthouse had frozen on the spot listening to Silver. He knew what was familiar to his Soldier, Silver and himself had Pepper paling and Dax looking furious with nowhere to vent. Siles and Rhodey had looks on their faces like they were trying to imagine what that would be like to live through; in stark contrast, both his Soldier and Silver were openly smirking at his observation at the end.

"I always told you, Silver. It is one thing to disobey and suffer, and once, there was no punishment worse than my amusement at their stress. The problem is that they stopped holding the blade to my throat. They started holding it at _your_ throat, with a gun trained on _Snipe._ It is something _far worse_ to disobey and watch another suffer. Someone I _cared_ for. 

"They _needed_ that control point on me; they did not need to use it on you. So they never had the knife at my throat to make you freeze.

"Raylor was an imaginative bastard; he had _many_ plans for what he could do to you if I didn't fall in line. He even had plans set aside for Snipe, too, ready to be actioned at a word, so the second I crossed the arbitrary lines he drew, I could do nothing but wait. Even in the beginning, though, before you came along, I didn't _understand_ why they feared me. I didn’t know I could escape. So don’t blame yourself for that. I obeyed for you, that is all. I stayed because I didn’t know I could leave. I just enjoyed pissing off everyone in power."

"But you escaped in the end."

"That was different. I didn’t escape in the way you’re thinking. There was no conscious thought about running. I had already been fracturing and blacking out, and then I suffered a complete fracture. I wasn't at The Charnel House, which I believed was my home. I was escaping a place I had been taken too. I was about as in control of my actions during that period, as any of us were under the compulsion of the chair. It took months for me to regain any kind of personal autonomy; by then, I had been free for months; I had slaughtered many handlers, destroyed many bases. I couldn't have even directed you back to the medical base.

"They didn’t know how dangerous it was to keep something like me and starve me; that was one of their mistakes. The fractures, they made everything hard. I'd spent too long in solitary, and that was before they moved me off-site. I needed to feed desperately, and the gold in my mind started asking why they blinded us. Why they feared us. That other Experiments, Targets were prey, but Guards are just as human. Asking questions I had never really considered before. I was simply starving, so I fed. Then I fed on one of the medics. Then I posited, if Guards and Medics are prey, then what of the Handlers? They took you. They took Snipe. There was no one to hurt to force me to obey anymore. There was silence to my questions. So I stopped holding the pieces of my mind together. I let them shatter into gold, let that iteration of Gold become what he was born to do..."

"What was that?"

His Soldier leaned forward to answer. Apparently he and Gold had gotten quite close in the mission to find Silver. For some reason, Tony found himself smiling. 

"Hunting Monsters."

Because that was certainly something Gold would say with the sharp smile to match.

"I looked for you, in every base, with every handler I found. I'm sorry I failed to find you sooner." 

"Looks like you succeeded, Gold. Plus, I think I could like this place. You surround yourself with good people. It's good. You don't do well alone. Dax tells me you don't even need parameters anymore." 

His mind still fell back on the template of parameters occasionally, but they didn't hold him as much as they once did. Tony didn't know where it had come from; he had thought about parameters once but not in the structured way that Gold had eventually turned too. 

Then, Tony knew there was a lot about his mind he didn't understand; that was something that he thought would remain true for some time to come. It wasn't like he could go to a professional, and even if he could, where would they start? 

Tony knew how to work with it now, only using it in certain situations rather than for every single human interaction. It actually helped him more often than not. There was an odd degree of comfort with it. Similar to the comfort he felt towards anything or one that the stripped-down versions of him had accepted. 

"Not with these people, it’s good, not having to hide. I wanted to tell you more about my powers back then, but it would have made you even more of a target. Just by _knowing_ me and having magic. You already were a target. I couldn't make it _worse."_

"I know. I knew back then too, Gold. I could feel your intentions that you wanted to tell me, but you thought that it was an unacceptable risk for something you declared a selfish want. You forget how long we had our magic hooked up. You might have been able to subvert my ability for certain actions, but not all the time. Your intentions were always clearer than everyone else's to me. More ordered and often realistic, made it easier to track. At least when you weren't actively screwing with my perception.

"Anyway, no more blaming. Without you, I would have burned up in a year or two, like most people did in that place. Others burned out, yet you kept us sane, kept us going for years after me and Snipe should have died. Several years of you looking out for me, teaching me everything you knew. You _gave_ me the skills to survive after they took me away. Without you, we wouldn't be free, eating pizza surrounded by friends."

"I like this kid." 

"You're alright to James. Thanks for saving Gold for me. He needs his anchors." 

Silver shifted on the sofa, poking Tony until he finally lifted his tablet. Using his lap for a pillow, closing his eyes, Silver settled to sleep by the looks of it. Reaching out, Tony matched the gesture instinctively without looking or even registering the movement before magic flashed across his senses. Then, Tony didn't need his eyes for Silver. Never had. Magic sparked and mixed as Silver sighed. His Soldier felt unsure, even though Tony felt his hand twitch. Even though Silver's eyes were closed, Tony could almost feel him rolling his eyes as he reached out with his other hand to add his Soldier's to theirs. 

"Thought you old folks were meant to be smart." 

His Soldier snorted before adding his magic to the mix. He felt good surrounded by his family, and the magic was a constant comfort to him. Silver eventually drifted off to sleep as his soldier was watching TV, his metal hand running through his hair as Tony focused on work. Nat, Dax and Siles joined them not long after Silver settled, with Dax sitting on the floor, leaning against his legs. A constant hum of contact all around Tony let him relax, reaffirming his connections to his people, whether that be with magic or proximity. Pepper and Rhodey were curled up on the loveseat next to them. Peter was on a trip of some kind but due home soon. Vision was still on holiday. But this was good. He could see most of his people, and knew where the others were.

It was a handy thing that Tony was surrounded by his family, because he suddenly found something in the Serpent Society files that instantly raised his heart rate. Something he had not expected to find, even with his paranoia. 

Apart from Silver, who when asleep, was utterly dead to the world, the others with sensitive hearing immediately stopped what they were doing and surrounded him with a constant hum of warmth and safety. Those who couldn't hear knew something was up and followed the rest. Silver and his Soldier's magic still mixing, kept his mind together, surged up in answer to his own unease, even with the fact that Silver was asleep and his soldier was still relatively new to magic.

Dax's magic also reached out and curled around him, instantly warming him up. His magic must have really given him away for Dax to reach out like that. It was Dax who got there first, asking what had triggered this.

"What is it, Tony?" 

"It was a setup." 

Tony flicked the video file to the TV screen.

"The whole thing, it was a set up and I walked right into it."

It was a composite video that had been put together by someone else. The moment he entered the building, it had been set to track him. The CCTV cameras that they thought were disabled had a secondary system they had missed. One that was set to track _his_ face. It only recorded when he was in range, and then they automatically stopped recording, which was why they hadn't noticed it. It was on an entirely different system that FRIDAY hadn't had access to. The video was compiled automatically and sent out before they even left the warehouse. They only had it because FRIDAY had done a more in-depth, second sweep of everything as they left. She'd caught the complete video, but they'd missed its importance with all the other data.

In a few places, the video zoomed in or out, an obvious manual function which likely meant a person had been watching in real-time—someone off-site. Someone who had been highly focused on him and his abilities over anyone else. His Soldier had been featured a few times, only when he used his magic. Otherwise, it just stayed on Tony.

Tony had been fractured, so he _had not hidden._

The second iteration of Gold didn't hide his abilities when he thought it was _safe_ to do so. Nothing like Hydra's Gold had. With Hydra broken, and the fact that there were no handlers left to abuse his abilities, he didn't _need_ to hide as much as he did in the past. 

Tony hadn't been following his protocols on that raid. So, Tony had moved even faster, hit harder and used his magic in ways Hydra could never have conceived of. 

He had cared about little more than the end goal.

That was when he got to the part where he used his strength _and_ magic to tear the cell open. 

So. Fucking. _Stupid._

 _No one_ had known he could do that bar his Soldier and Silver. Even Snipe only had vague ideas on how he and Silver could mix their enhanced strength with his magic.

That was why all of the people were so bizarre. Multiple levels of ability. Different fighting styles. Different weapons. 

_Capture the wild things and bring them in line_

It had been a _test._

_And own what was never your right to confine_

Someone was testing him. Someone who knew that Silver would lower his defences. Likely to attempt to force him to use different abilities to combat different people. So that they could form a more accurate idea of his abilities. 

_The lives and the loves and the songs are what matters_

Someone who knew Silver was the way to get him to obey. Who knew Silver could get past his defences. That he would be reckless in his rush to rescue Silver. In that rush, Gold had told whoever this person was, more about himself and his abilities than five years of Hydra captivity, and two years of hunting, and _all_ the time after, than he ever had before.

_I'll tend to the flame; you can worship the ashes_

Tony had no idea who this person was, or what they were planning on doing with what they had gained. He had Silver, but now Tony didn't know if _he_ was safe; more importantly, he didn't know if his family was safe.

_What will we do when the world it is ending_

_And time it is halted for friend and for foe?_

_Try to hold on to the time as it passes_

_I'll tend to the flame; you can worship the ashes_

_I'll tend to the flame; you can worship the ashes_

* * *

The Longest Johns - Ashes

  
  



	4. Silver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And that's why Gold laughs...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, Sorry this chapter took so long! Here's hoping the next won't have such a ridiculous break, I injured my right arm (again), and you'd think the fact all of this story is written AND beta'd would mean injuries wouldn't matter, except I always end up having a bright idea before I post and 1500 works appear from the ether and slither upon my page.
> 
> Anyway! Here's hoping the next chapter comes out nice and soon! The gap did, however, mean I had some great ideas for Gold#5, which is like Part 2. This storyline was just so big I couldn't squish it down, which is why #4 and #5 are a part 1 and part 2 deal.
> 
> Enough waffle, I know you're all here to have the next part of Silver's story xD

**_-592A POV-_ **

"592A This is your cell; there is someone else like you. Feel free to speak to them." 

They practically dropped him on the bed, and his legs didn't exactly feel up to standing right now, even if he wanted to get back up. Anytime he moved, his head spun. He could barely remember anything of the walk that had brought him to this cell. No matter how hard he tried to concentrate on the man talking, he could only just make out what they were saying.

His head was killing him as he squinted to attempt to make out the two men standing in front of him, the one who had spoken... looked bored? He shook his head slightly, trying to dislodge some of the fog and pain that was bogging him down. He couldn't be sure of much, but he _at least_ was confident in the fact that he was now sitting in a cell of some kind, and that there were similar cells with bars around him. Strangely they were all open, but then _everything_ about this situation was strange to him.

Why was he even in a cell?

He couldn't remember if this was something he should be concerned about, or if it was just how things were. 

"Why bother? He hasn't spoken to 186A the last five times you told him that. They forget practically everything from the first hours after the chair." 

The other guy speaking brought his attention back to the two men. It was like he couldn't focus properly, his mind was scrambled, and he was losing track of thoughts before he even had them. It was a challenger to follow the conversation even though they were right in front of him.

He forced himself to focus on the two men. They were dressed identically in mostly black, with small red sections and a logo that didn't seem to mean anything to him. They were armed, of that he was sure, quite heavily too. Guards then, they were clearly Guards of some sort. The only thing tripping him up was that despite the cells and The Guards… this didn't feel like a prison. Even though he couldn't think clearly about what a prison was, he just knew this... wasn't. 

Again, he wasn't sure how he knew that when he didn't even know where he was or what his name was, yet he knew the make and model of every weapon they had on their person. His eyes quickly picked out the obvious and hidden weapons too. Simply logging the information, even if he didn't know what for. That was easier than remembering what they were talking about.

Not sure whether _that_ was normal or not, he tried to pull his attention to what they were talking about, versus their weapons, just to catch the end of their conversation. Which meant as much to him as everything else did.

"I just do what Rackshaw tells me to." 

The first Guard shrugged before turning to walk off, with little interest in him, it seemed. His head still felt foggy, and he still wasn't sure where he was. Other than the fact he was in an open-cell in a strange place with heavily armed Guards. He watched from his seat as he waited for his head to stop spinning and managed to focus on a number of people who passed his cell. There were several other people like him. Dressed in similar, thin, occasionally torn clothing that was in various shades of black or grey. They were distinct from the heavily armed, well-dressed Guards. They all had similar brands on their arms that made him notice that he also had one. 186A? Was that someone's brand?

He waited until he felt more stable before standing up and eventually venturing out of the cell. He assumed the fact that it was open and others were walking around, that this was acceptable. There were several Guards posted at certain intervals watching everyone. He attempted to speak to three people about who this 186A might be, but after being attacked several times, he quickly gave up on that. 

Although he wanted to find this person, they were like him? Did they mean the strange silver that sparked in his hands? He hadn't noticed anyone else like that. 

Slowly, he can't remember why he was looking for this person. 

The compulsion to find someone is there. He just… doesn't understand it 

* * *

It was maybe a few days later when he saw The Guards bring in another person. He hadn't seen anyone else arrive since he had started watching, so he moved into a position to see what was happening. Luckily the person was being taken to the empty cell opposite to him. They dropped him on the floor before leaving, which seemed weird. He'd seen The Guards interact with several people over the last few days, but this one seemed to be treated differently. Not a good kind of difference either; he was dropped heavily onto the ground, and he appeared to be bleeding.

The strangest thing, however, was that the man was _blindfolded._

Now, he had been watching everyone he could without getting into fights, he had been making mental notes of the numbers on peoples arms, he had noticed that people seemed to have very different abilities, but _no one_ had been blindfolded. It was something that stuck out because it hadn't taken him long to discover that this was not a forgiving place, that things like food, water and the ability to sleep safely were not assured. So being blindfolded on top of that, seemed cruel in a way that bothered him. Even though he knew he could do nothing about it. Even though he didn't even know this guy, there was something about the whole situation that stuck with him when everything else had passed him by.

He wasn't sure what it was about this strange man, but _something_ pushed him to watch. He had not seen his number, but he was treated as if he had been here a long time by The Guards. There was a degree of familiarity that was hard to miss, and he would be blind not to notice how wary they were of him. Of this blindfolded, unarmed man, yet The Guards held themselves differently around him. Instead of two, there were four. They watched him with caution in a way they didn't watch the others. Instead of bored and uninterested, they were alert and ready, with hands resting on their weapons. They were tense, always prepared. It was as if they were waiting for something that never seemed to come. Yet, they still never let their guard down. 

He would say it seemed like The Guards knew something the rest of them didn't, but then that was standard practice given the state of their memories.

His hair was shaggy, but it was shorter than his own. He was pretty sure that he was also quite a lot shorter than himself. What was it about this man that scared those with the power? Now _that_ was something he had to know.

The man didn't move for 48 minutes, when he suddenly jerked awake. Even though he had what appeared to be healing a head wound, judging from the blood still visible on his forehead and matted in his hair, the blindfolded man was oddly agile as he stood and moved around the cell. He had expected the man to have a severe concussion. Not that he knew how he knew this, but then in the last few days, he had come to accept he knew how to do weird things. 

With that injury, he shouldn't have been able to stand as quickly as he had. Yet seconds after he jerked awake, he leapt to his feet in a shockingly graceful move. The man froze for a second, his head tilted to one side as he turned in a slow circle. If not for the blindfold, he would think the man was inspecting his cell. The blindfolded man then crossed to the nearest wall, lay his fingers on it and walked the entire room, looking puzzled. 

After a few minutes of a shockingly thorough investigation, again, the guy was _blindfolded_. He had wondered at first if maybe he could actually see through the blindfold, but watching him inspect the cell disproved that. He was certainly blind. It just didn't seem to impact him as much as he would have thought. Eventually, the man left his cell, still looking slightly puzzled. He followed him several paces behind so that he wouldn't be noticed.

The blindfolded man walked with his fingers brushing the walls, which made sense. He seemed to know when people were around him, which made absolutely no sense. A few minutes later, they arrived at another cell, which he had not expected. Maybe that was why he was puzzled? The Guards put him in the wrong cell. This cell is slightly larger than his own, but all of the cells are pretty much the same. They all have the same things, it's just the size and location that varies, and from what he had gathered in the last few days, The Guards don't seem to choose the cells. The larger cells go to whoever has the ability to fight for them.

So how the hell does this blindfolded, short, beaten bloody man, have one of the largest cells he had come across? That it had remained untouched and unclaimed in his absence? How did he even know this was his cell?! 

He couldn't even remember his own name, yet this blindfolded man could remember enough to know The Guards had deposited him in the wrong cell. He knew the way back without his sight. 

He watches the blindfolded man repeat what he did in the other cell, this time without the confusion. Sees the man pull a knife from a hidden section of the ceiling that hadn't even looked damaged. He hadn't seen where he pulled the knife from; it just looked like a solid ceiling.

He needed to know _more._

* * *

He thought it would be easy to follow a blindfolded man. Even one that The Guards feared. Even if the blindfolded man walked around with a strange confidence. If he were wearing that blindfold, he probably would have walked with several walls. Let alone people. 

He walks as if he can see.

No, that isn't right. He isn't using his eyes; it all comes from his other senses. He runs his fingers across the walls as they walk, and he's always walking. _Memorising._ That is how he seems to walk around with such confidence. Somehow he has memories of the pathways of the rabbit's warren this place appears to be.

He had trouble remembering where things were and he could sodding see! All the walls were black, the ceiling was black, and the floor was black. Identical concrete in other rooms that were painted black to match the black stone of the cells, only broken up by cell doors or metal doors that were occasionally open, allowing access to more identical spaces. There were no windows. No natural light, and from how the walls felt, he was pretty confident they were underground. A cold damp that made him think of the underground for some reason. It made everything confusing, especially with his memory shot; he was at constant risk of getting lost. Yet, the blindfolded man knew where everything was.

If it isn't his fingers, then it's his hearing. The way he tilts his head and orientates himself as he is tracking certain sounds. He supposed his other senses are compensating for his lost eyesight, that doesn't make it any less impressive.

The first thing he properly logged about the blindfolded man, was that he could vanish from almost right in front of him, leaving him confused as to where he went. Which was ridiculous, because again, his eyesight was not impaired in any way. It should be easy to follow a blindfolded man in this place, yet he seemed to enjoy vanishing on him. The third time it happened was when he realised that no matter how good he was at stalking people. No matter how many others he had done this with, others with no impairments and impressive skills. The blindfolded man knew what he was doing. Instead of attacking him, however, he seemed to enjoy leading him on wild chases and then vanishing somehow. Turning up hours later, sitting somewhere obvious and smiling to himself.

The second thing he discovered was that it was not only The Guards that feared him. Even though he had not attacked him, even though the blindfolded man knew he was stalking him, he seemed… passive. Non-violent. He wanted to say harmless, but after a day of stalking him, he could see the potential in this strange man.

The fear manifested itself in different ways, but _everyone,_ from The White-Coats, The Guards and the other people like himself, they all feared this one blindfolded man, even though he hasn't seen a solid reason as to _why._ Sure, he had magic, but that couldn't be it? No matter how much potential or how that strange part of his mind that assessed people was flashing brighter with warning as each consecutive day he followed him went by… from what he could see, the blindfolded man had done nothing to provoke this fear. Especially from Guards who prowled this place in the dark in body gear with a wide array of weapons at their disposal.

In contrast, a blindfolded man, barely 5"6, in a threadbare shirt and thin, flimsy trousers… it seemed almost farcical. Even if he did carry a knife, he hadn't seen it be used on anyone! Other than sitting in the canteen sharpening it on occasion, it rarely left his belt. Whereas The Guards regularly had a weapon in hand when they crossed his path.

The man is different from what he was expecting, which is interesting. 

The third thing he learns is that for a man that seems to cause fear by walking down a hallway, he doesn't start fights. He honestly goes out of his way to avoid such things, _but,_ if someone forces the point, if someone attacks him? Well, that was when he realised the man didn't avoid fights out of fear of losing or avoidance of injury, because whilst he did not start fights, he certainly ended them. With the kind of swift finality that drew uneasy stares from any who happened to be in the area.

The fourth thing he realises is that even though he’s blindfolded, he seems to _know_ things. More than he first guessed, and it had been impressive when the blindfolded man appeared to have a map of this maze in his mind. He is always first when the canteen opens. No matter who they put him up against in the pit, he usually wins unless The Handlers get underhanded. There is a reason he is ranked Zero, the rankings change often, but his spot seems almost static. He knows who he is fighting, and adapts his style based on who he is placed against. He sits on a table in the canteen and seems to take note of each person who enters, from the other side of the damned room.

The fifth thing he realises is related to the fourth. That somehow, the man _always_ knows who he is talking to, let alone fighting. He doesn't ask people their name, number or anything, and yet... he is familiar with each person, even though he can not see them.

The sixth thing comes about from frustration. Tracking is something he is _good_ at; he had followed several other people by now when he was learning how this place works. Yet, the blindfolded man vanishes and appears in different areas. Even though he observes him, he seems to just disappear. He knew this, of course. It was the first thing he had logged, but what he _hadn't_ known was that even _The Guards_ couldn't track him.

The man sings as he eats, which has others watching him in fear. This brings him to the seventh thing he learns about the man. Potentially the most important thing of all. 

_That he sings as he eats._

It is something so simple and so small, that it could be easily overshadowed by the other things he learned. It isn't as flashy or as intimidating as the rest. It doesn't inspire the same fear as the man's blade, or the confusion over whether this impaired man sees better than anyone else. This? This is _important._ This is more than the maps he creates or how he recognises people that are near. This is more than even his games with The Guards.

This is information that _does not exist_ in this hell-pit, everything else he could learn… but the songs? They're different. They're from _outside._

How does he retain so much information? 

How does he have songs?

_How does he_ _remember that which exists outside these walls?_

* * *

The man with the blindfold is taken often. More than anyone else, and he knows because he started counting and logging other peoples well as the blindfolded man. He expands his data pool which requires a lot of work, but the information is needed. He doesn't know _where_ The Guards take people, but it seems at random, there is no pattern he can discern. They just take people, and they are gone for an indeterminate amount of time. He's seen people vanish for less than a day to several. The Guards just turn up and collect whoever they are sent for, and the blindfolded man seems to be popular. Then he vanishes for anything from a few hours to a few days, then he returns. 

They must go _outside._ To a world that some days he wonders if it even exists. When all he sees is black walls and cells. Metal doors and Guards standing at them. White-Coats looking down on those like himself, people living in a half daze of confusion and the constant, desperate bite, scratch and clawing of survival. It's hard to imagine a world outside this bleak, ever repeating existence. He wonders what the sun looks and feels like more often than he would like to admit. 

Studying and stalking the blindfolded man is as much for his own sanity as it is anything else. It stops him dreaming of stars and flashes of red and gold.

So he watches the blindfolded man get taken. Sometimes he walks back to his cell under his own power. Sometimes he is dropped unconscious on the floor of his cell. Sometimes he is dropped into the cell opposite his own. The injuries are pretty consistent, too; he always seems to return with something bleeding or bruised. Whatever he is doing outside of these walls seems dangerous.

He knows that he must have left this place too. Even if he doesn't remember. He remembers when they brought him into his cell just like they do for everyone else. So he knows that when he returns, they wipe their memories, somehow. He doesn't know how… he isn't sure he wants to understand how they take something as integral as your memories away.

He doesn't want to think about how many times he's already done this.

* * *

Luckily, he doesn't seem to be taken out as often as the others; he has been here long enough that he has started having more than barely there flashes of memories. Some memories seem to be inching back in his mind. They don't make sense yet; there are flashes and images—more than the colours that plagued his sleep in those early days. 

Scenes that he doesn't remember. 

People he doesn't recognise. 

Places he doesn't recall. 

Even with time, he seems to have to claw this information back—piece by agonising, confusing piece. Yet somehow, a man wiped often... remembers.

He long since discovered that walking around is the best tactic to avoid being attacked in this place, so he walks a circuitous route several times a day. He needs to do it to continue to gather data anyway. Even if he is tired or sore, he still walks. Eventually, he maps the place out. Although not as well as the man whose steps he always seems to be following. He _still_ doesn't know how he disappears.

Finally, he finds the room where _it_ happens. 

The Guards call it the _recalibration_ room.

Just thinking about it makes his head hurt, even though it had been quite some time since they took his memories. Part of him remembers that room on a visceral level, even if he doesn't have the memories to go with the bone-deep aversion.

Usually, he avoids the recalibration room. 

He changes his route subtly each time he walks it, several times a day, to ensure he covers everything, to ensure he sees everyone, to ensure his patterns are not recognisable. 

That's important. Patterns. Even if he doesn't know _why._

Figuring that the better he knew the lay of the land, the harder it would be for the blindfolded man to disappear on him. 

He still avoids that room for most of the day, although he forces himself to pass it at least twice a day. Even though it makes his head hurt just to be near it, every time they take the blindfolded man, he forces himself to return to it, time and time again.

He needs to know how he remembers. 

* * *

Several days after the man was last taken, as he was following his route, he got lucky. He had seen several people be… processed in the recalibration room by now, and it doesn't matter how many times he sees it. It is just as horrifying each time. It still causes a phantom pain to flare in his mind and watching a person going from struggling to compliant… knowing that _he has been in that chair._ Not knowing _how many_ _times_ he has been in that chair… it's hard to keep it on his route. It doesn't help that he can feel it through their intentions, how they go from panic to a muddled placid mess.

Part of him wants never to see it again, but a larger part wants to know how the blindfolded man remembers. How he fights the chair than none of them can resist. So he forces himself to pass it time and time again, and today he finally got lucky. He was just coming up on the room when he heard a commotion, and he let it draw him to the room—standing close enough to see but far enough that The Guards won't bother him. They've been known to grab people hanging around in this area, which is probably why it is empty. Even with their memories stolen, something in them tells them to stay away.

He wonders what it says about him that he keeps ignoring that internal warning to hunt a strange man he doesn't even know.

"186A, You're going to behave for us this time. For once, let's just make this _easy._ " 

"When has that ever worked for you? Fuck off. Why would I make this easy for you twisted fucks?" 

He blinks at that. Then blinks again. And again, because what the fuck? Was he trying to piss off the people in control of the machine that screws with their minds!?

Most people avoided even _looking_ at The Guards, let alone The White-Coats that are so much worse. Sure, he had seen the blindfolded man push The Guards before, but this… this is different. This man, whilst blindfolded and being held by _three_ Guards, with _two_ more standing close by, _with_ their weapons drawn, grins widely as he swears and tries to rile them up, even though they are all on a hair-trigger as is. 

There is even twice the number of White-Coats in the room compared to what he usually saw!

"Did the weasel kick you out of his little shop of horrors? Poor Simon, getting kicked back to dealing with the chair? Now instead of beating helpless people in the black cells, you only have _this_ to prove your superiority over people who won't even remember you, well, except me, don't worry, I remember your useless endeavours. Pathetic-"

They eventually force him into the chair, a Guard cutting him off that only leads to him smiling widely with bloodied teeth. One of The White-Coats (Simon, he assumes) looks a cross between furious and uneasy with how the blindfolded man seems to find it so easy to focus on him. Easily following his progress through the room as they force him down. He gives them serious trouble and makes them fight for every inch. He's laughing up until they force him in place, and he can see how it makes The Guards uneasy. Well, at least he knows why The Guards act like they do now.

All of The White-Coats look uneasy by the time he is strapped down, humming and seeming unconcerned with what is about to happen. They glance at each other often, their faces clearly showing that they are unsure around this blindfolded man. 

The blindfolded man doesn't stand a chance against them, not really, and yet... they still have their hands on their weapons as if _he_ is the threat. Two Guards have their guns drawn and levelled at him. 

It almost seems hilarious, if he didn't know what was coming.

Sure he had seen this unease in others, but he had never seen _why_ before. He had never seen him openly _fight_ against The Guards. He's never seen _anyone_ openly fight against The Guards. He's never seen anyone talk to The White-Coats like that. 

It just... isn't done, because everyone knows that's an excellent way to get dragged into the recalibration room. As a means of control of the population, threats of the recalibration room universally work… except right now. It doesn't even work when the blindfolded man is _in the damned chair._

Watching someone else in the chair makes his head hurt, but he forces himself to stay. He knows the words that will come next, and for some reason, he doesn't want to hear them. 

He doesn't want this blindfolded man to say he will comply. 

He likes that he doesn't comply, even if it seems to bring him pain. Even if it makes those in charge wary, which makes them dangerous. As they take that gag out, however, he sings again. 

_"We are the warriors, who learned to love the pain,_

_We come from different places but have the same name."_

"Again!" 

How did he do that? That is impossible. After the chair, _there is only compliance._ There are no memories. There is _nothing._ He has watched many people go into that chair, and the same thing happens every single time… 

And yet… 

He knows the blindfolded man seemed to remember songs somehow, something that had always impressed him. Something that made him curious, he had wondered if he healed faster. That his mind recovered quickly, so the songs came back, but this… this is something else. His intentions feel different, cracked, but still firm. Not the muddled fuzz he felt from everyone else after they had been in the chair.

He doesn't just retain information from outside these walls after the chair. The chair _can't_ take away his songs.

_"We are the broken ones, who chose to spark a flame,_

_Watch as our fire rages, our hearts are never tame."_

"You know he won't say the words, Si. He never does, Jo heard from Arthur that he can't say them; he gets the songs instead. No point in wiping him several times." 

He's leaning heavily against the wall now to force himself to remain when all he wants to do is _get out._ They don't even bother trying to keep him quiet this time. How many times are they going to do this? How does he carry on as if he wasn't in the chair?

"He's just fucking stubborn. Arthur doesn't work on this level, so he can butt the fuck out. I'm not going easy on him for defying us, no matter what the git wants. The Handlers aren't the ones working in this room! One more, then toss him back." 

This time he almost wishes he _would_ say the words. 

Each consecutive time the chair seems to hurt more. 

And yet, when the chair powers down, he still laughs. Laughs, and sings. Even as his voice is hoarse and he can barely keep his eyes open, nevertheless, he sings.

_"Cause we were born for this,_

_We were born for this."_

* * *

He watched the blindfolded man whenever he was able; his ability to discern what people were going to do made it possible, but even then, he struggled to keep track of him. It only worked well when he could touch the other person. From a distance, it could be pretty hit or miss, but he is dedicated to this path now.

_"I can't tell you what I feel inside"_

After watching the man in the chair, he has to know more. He remembers the words, and it's not the same as the blindfolded man, but _he_ has music now too. He always arrives at the canteen at the same time too, as that was the main place where he sang, and he wanted to know more of the blindfolded man's songs.

_"This feeling burns inside my mind"_

The more he watched, the more interactions he saw between the blindfolded man and others… the more he realised with dawning horror, and amusement, that it wasn't just the techs in the recalibration room that he disobeyed. He was starting to understand why he was treated the way he was.

_"Just a little poor me"_

Even when he obeyed, it was in a way that angered _The Handlers._

_"I tried hard, you know I cared"_

That was a turning point in his mind, watching a person defy The Handlers. Even if it was in small amounts. Even when the reaction was obvious. He didn't care; if anything, the more wound up and harsher The Handlers retaliated, the more the man laughed. There seemed to be nothing he wouldn't take for the amusement of fucking with those in power.

_"Thousand yards, embrace that stare"_

Angering the Handlers often got you dragged back to the recalibration room or any number of other punishments, and yet he did it anyway. _Constantly._

_"Manic days, I know you know"_

He still didn't attack anyone outside of the pits, not without reason, and somehow he could recognise people that tried to get one over on him. He was sure of that now. It wasn't a fluke. He _knew_ who he was speaking too. He knew if someone attacked him in the night and that he always retaliated the next day. He was watching him now in the canteen, where he sat on the tabletop. No one sat in any of the chairs within three arm lengths of him. Others would stand or sit on the floor to avoid sitting near him. 

_"You'd get high while I'd be low"_

He watched as the blindfolded man stood to leave. Sometimes he would jump down from his position; with a level of grace he still struggled to pair with a blindfolded man. Sometimes he didn't step down from the table immediately, which seemed to be the case today. He walked the length of the long table instead, heading for the exit. Uncaring of the people sat on either side of the benches, not pausing as others scrambled to move their trays from his path quickly. 

_"I can sense you're trembling inside"_

As a group, the branded experiments have the _least_ power in this place. They are the bottom rung of the ladder. 

_"Oh, that spiteful face"_

The Guards, and especially The White-Coats, are much higher in the power dynamic. The Handlers and The Headmaster at the top, but the experiments are _always_ at the bottom. Yet… The Guards still watched him carefully as he passed, and this blindfolded experiment, the bottom of the barrel, he never stopped singing. 

_"Certain things you just can never buy"_

The Experiments had no power here. 

_"Things you'll always chase.."_

Somehow, this guy didn't get that memo.

_"This feeling burns inside my mind_

_Just a little poor me."_

* * *

It's almost inevitable that they ended up coming at each other in the end. 

No one else in this place moved as they did. No one else had magic glittering around their hands. He had known this was coming for days, and yet it didn't stop him from following the strange man that stood out in a place where that was the _last_ thing you wanted.

The fight is unbalanced; even though he was trained well, he had never gone up against this man in the pits. Unfortunately, he can't think of another way to do this, and he needs _something_ to hold on to, because the longer this goes on? The chances of being _taken_ increase. He is terrified that he is going to be taken away again, that they'll make him forget again. That he'll lose everything he has worked for. He fears that more than even fighting the Zero of the pits.

Then he will be right back to where he was in the beginning, and _nothing will ever change._

He's more terrified of repeating an aimless cycle than he is of the blindfolded man. Which sets himself apart from everyone here, it seems. 

So, he was pretty sure that he would lose the fight, and yet, it put him close enough to _speak,_ and somehow this made sense as gold and silver magic meshed around them. Sparking and flaring out and around them instead of hitting each other. The magic wound itself together in a strange way, and instead of hurting either one of them, it was beautiful. Even if the usage was tiring. Or rather, utterly exhausting.

Even with everything he knew, that the man didn't start fights, only ended them. He didn't quite expect what would happen _next._ He hadn't had any plans beyond desperation and the need for something, someone, _anything_ before they took it all away again. He wanted, craved, _needed_ something to hold onto.

He gives the blindfolded man a name. _Gold._

He received one from him in kind. _Silver._

He hadn't thought about having a name in so long. He only had a number. _Silver_ hated the number. It was what The Guards, The White-Coats and the crazy doctor called him. A name is something huge in this place, and he feels like it's something tangible, something... _substantial_ , even as he's swept up in a sea of turbulence. It's a rock in the middle of a fast-paced river. It's a touchstone. It's a thread picked free from a tapestry, but it is _his_ thread, and he Guards or viciously.

Silver eats comfortably, sitting on a table, listening to Gold as he sings. Silver watches the uneasy looks cross people's faces when they look his way. He had found it interesting from the other side. Watching the people around Gold, back when he had been stuck on the _why._

From this side? He doesn't care so much about the why anymore. Not when those looks start to include him.

Now? Silver _understands_ why Gold laughs. 

Somehow, that makes Gold smile.

* * *

The first time they took Gold away from him after they started sharing a cell hurt more than every other time before it. He had been expecting it; of course. Gold had made sure that he knew it was coming. That Silver wasn't going into this blind. That even now they shared a space, Gold couldn't stop _this._ No one could.

In such a short time, Gold had already become something _important_ to him. More than just rock to hold onto when everything didn't make sense. More than something to wildly grab as his entire world was sent off-kilter. Despite their life, despite the truths of Charnel House and the existence of The Recalibration Room, Gold forged something with him, even though he knew it would be shattered one day. Gold had told him he will always pick up those pieces and start anew.

Mentor. 

Protector. 

Ally. 

Friend. 

_Family._

Just having a person to _sit_ and _talk_ to was something huge in this hell house of horrors. That wasn't even all Gold did, for a man that inspired fear in so many, he took Silver and stood in front of him. To be a wall between anything that Gold could keep away. To let Silver claw enough of his mind together, so he didn't feel like he was drowning anymore. He stood next to him and helped him learn and get better. He was faster, sharper, and he _learned,_ even if it would be robbed from him, Gold never seemed phased at this unending impossible task he had taken. He stood behind him and watched his back as Silver grew into his own power, as he found his feet and climbed the board.

Silver didn't need to fear the night now. Before, people had come into his cell to beat him whilst he was asleep—pretty standard operating practice for this place when the doors remained open at night, certainly before the pits opened. Anything to get an advantage the next day, and just like Gold stands out, he knows he stood out too. Even when he barely understood the magic in his bones. 

Magic scares people, so they react with violence. Anything to make him slower the next day, to hinder his progress, either for the food line, or worse. The pits. 

Walking into the pits bloody was never a good thing; people circled like sharks—any chance for an easy win against someone above you in the rankings. Or just to catch the eye of a Handler if you went for that kind of thing. 

The Handlers and Guards always loved to throw in injured people first. Entertainment for the sick fucks, they called it _incentive._ Gold called it bloodsports. 

Now there are two of them; he can sleep with the utter conviction that Gold will protect him. Gold can rest knowing that Silver will sit, standing guard, fresh and awake. Not tired, magic ready for anyone who darkens their door. Gold's cell was larger than the one he had managed to score before. Silver had never placed high enough in the rankings to get something bigger, warmer or better placed. It also meant he had been relatively left alone. There were easier targets who didn't have magic above him in the rankings. Even when he had been new, few would risk an unknown factor like that. Other engagements, speed, strength, durability, were easy to understand and plan for. There were a few that had dangerous enhancements, from the two Pyros to the Electrokinesis woman anyone smart avoided, even they were more predictable than magic. 

Whilst Silver had been untrained, the general populace saw Gold, and they looked to Silver with a similar concern. He might not have the same ability, but the _potential_ was there, and it had been both a protection from others whilst painting a target on his back. Now? Now people see that Gold took him in. They see that Gold is training him and Silver still laughs at how people edge away from him.

Since Gold took him in, hunger isn't the constant companion it once was. Sure, he's still kind of hungry; The Handlers never give out enough food. The only time they get something more substantial is when they're taken out on missions. Not that he remembers any of that, but Gold told him that he was given gel packs and nutrition injections to ensure they're at top form, whilst still keeping them weak and beaten down in the barracks. Gold assumed it was the same for everyone unless the Charnel House wanted its Experiments passing out from starvation on a mission.

Gold trains him in other things, too, in many things that make surviving in this place that much easier. Not just magic. Teaching him how to fight so that he knows how to end fights as quickly as Gold, but like Gold, he never starts them, and it doesn't take long before he starts getting a similar reputation as Gold. Not just that he is at Gold's side, but that he is dangerous on his own.

He also teaches him how to use his _magic_ in ways he had never imagined. Teaches him to make his magic intrinsic to his being. Not something he uses or picks up like a knife, but rather something he is. Their powers have more in common than not, and suddenly Silver isn't struggling trying to work out basic things because Gold knows what and how to teach him.

Silver's magic is different from Gold's, though, and it's more than just the colour. Gold's magic is heavy; it wraps around people and sinks deep into their bones; he's watched people slow when Gold's magic hits them. Watched as they go sluggish and languorous, even if they had been fuelled by rage and violence before, they can't seem to help calming and falling as Gold flashes a smile that is more bared teeth of a predator than a friendly greeting. Silver's magic is nothing like that. 

Gold knows how he reads intentions, how he parses through probabilities of what people will do in the future. Silver had told him everything in the hopes Gold could help him understand the increasing mess of data. How Silver's magic lightly skims across people, like skipping stones across a lake. He knows Gold can read something too, but Silver also understands why he can't tell him. He can read it in Gold's intentions and feel the conviction of which he lives by, that protecting Silver is essential, that it gives him purpose when he had been lacking. How Gold's mind had told him to plan, but he hadn't known what for. 

Now he had a Silver; things made sense to Gold. Now he had Silver. He didn't push, push, push at those above him. Oh, he didn't suddenly become a well-behaved little Experiment, but he didn't go out of his way to antagonise those above them; now he had someone to share his days with.

Gold teaches him a lot, and he is happier for it, whether it is magic, fighting or building something. Gold thrives on it. Most of all? Gold teaches him how to _see._

For a blinded man, Gold sees more than anyone else in this joint, more than Silver had presumed when he was watching him. His lack of sight allows him to see the Charnel House and its inhabitants in a different way, and he teaches Silver how to _see_ to. How to watch people. He's got nothing on Gold. The man seems to know things, things Silver can't even track, but he's getting better every day, and he hopes that the chair won't be able to take everything away. It will take the lessons, but it seems to leave their skills... 

Which brings him back to where he is at this moment. It's how he _knew_ The Guards were coming to _their_ cell. 

The Guards intentions are always some of the loudest in this place. A few of The White-Coats were close, but The Guards were the easiest to read and the hardest to ignore. 

The guilt that crashed into him when his first wave of panic comes with the hope that they aren't coming for him hits him hard. That hope quickly sours in his gut because if they aren't coming for him, then they're coming for his Gold. It turns on him long before he knows who they are coming for.

He sees the turns they make before they walk it. He sees their actions spread out up to the moment they reach the cell and how the variations branch out into the future. Silver rarely goes so deep as it can get so complicated as to give him migraines, but this time he lets all those variations splitter through his mind.

He knows that it's Gold they want.

Gold had already told him, over and over, that if Silver is taken. If Silver forgets. _When Silver forgets. When they force him to forget. When Silver forgets who Silver is. When they take his Gold from his mind. When th-_ That Gold will come for him. _Gold will always come for him. Gold won't let them make him forget. Gold won't let those memories pass. Gold will fight his chair to keep his Silver. Gold wi-_ But the fear _,_ it is still there. That is something that won't pass. That fear wraps around him, seeps into his mind like rot and ruin that Gold is always ready to burn from his mind.

Silver _finally_ has something tangible, and he fears it turning to _ashes._

There is no relief when they grab Gold; the panic is sharper as he reaches out. He doesn't want them to take Gold, even though they have taken him time and time and time _and time and time an-_ Silver doesn't know what happens to him out there; he doesn't know where people go when they leave. He had been working up to asking Gold what happened, but he had been skirting the issue. He knew it could be painful, bloody, violent, and he knew that sometimes Experiments never returned. Now he curses his cowardice. If he had asked, then at least he would have an _idea_ of where Gold is going, how long he will be, what he was doing, why he came back bloody on so many occasions. 

Now he has nothing and just his mind to occupy him.

Silver doesn't want Gold to see the chair again, for it to burn him up just because he _can't_ say the words. And it is _can't; Silver_ knows The White-Coats know that, yet they still punish his _inability_ to comply as if it is ' _choice'._ Silver doesn't want Gold to hurt for their bruised egos, but he's powerless. Whilst Gold might not realise his place in this pit, Silver knows his, know he can do nothing to help Gold if they decide to burn and burn and bu-

For all his skills, his magic, his abilities, in this place... they're kept _powerless,_ and Silver hates it. He despises it.

Gold knows all of this somehow. Gold has that smile on his face that he was expecting this, the one he has when he wishes he could do more. The one when he gets extra food, but it is still never enough to stop Silver from being hungry. Gold just _knows,_ so he holds his hand out for Silver as he desperately reaches for him. Silver had no plan; this wasn't thought out, it was instinct, it was frustration, it was anguish… their fingers barely had a chance to make contact before Gold was yanked away, but it was enough. That bare contact was enough as their magic sparked to life. Their magic twists around each other's fingers, and long after the sounds of footsteps fade away, long after Gold is taken, Silver watches the gold dance around his fingers instead of his familiar Silver.

When it fades, sinking into his skin hours later, the panic returns. The only thing keeping it inside is that he still _feels_ it, heavy as if it's in his bones. Silver's magic is light, whereas Gold's has this _weight_ to it. Not seeing it still hurts, even though he can still feel it. He just wants his Gold back. This place is different with Gold watching his back and looking out for him, now it's cold, and all he can do is wait and wait and wa-

* * *

When Gold finally returns, Silver was unsure, which is ridiculous. This isn't the first time Gold had been taken since they started talking. Just the first time after he switched his cell. It was as if some evil twist of fate that _this time_ Gold would lose his memories. That he would come back and not recognise him. That Gold would demand that he leave. That Gold wouldn't be _Gold._ It's ridiculous, and yet it's _all he can think about._

"Hey, Silver."

He jumped up at Gold's voice, he sounded hoarse, but it seems this is one of the good times where he walked back. He knows how much he hates it when the med team's knock them out, and Silver is half sure they're doing it more often.

"Hey."

It's small, but it's something. It lets him release that breath trapped in his chest, and he is flooded with relief.

Even though they both know that this will happen again.

And again. 

And again. 

And again.

And aga-

* * *

It doesn't get any easier, Silver thinks. It doesn't matter how many times Gold is taken; it doesn't get any easier. He isn't sure if it is a blessing or a curse that he doesn't know how many times Gold had been taken away and he had been left alone. 

Because sometimes Silver is taken, and Gold is left alone.

Somehow he got lucky and found a person who was telling the _truth_ when he always promised to find him. Even when Silver has no memories. When he's sat in a cell trying to work out what The Guards are and where he is. Barely seconds after The Guards leave, Gold arrives. He can't imagine what this place would be like after the chair and to be alone. He doesn't want to imagine it even though he knows he has lived it. Sometimes having a memory taken seems like a blessing, even in this place. 

"Hey kid, you alright?" 

Silver jumps up, still breathing hard through the sudden blast of panic, but he quickly falls into one of the fighting stances that Gold had been drilling into him. Crouched down, silver magic curled around his wrists, brightly lighting the dim cell. He blinks as the man finally comes into his vision; Silver immediately starts logging information exactly how Gold had drilled into him. He's black, tall, not as tall as himself, but definitely taller than Gold. Although that isn't hard. Thin, his clothes hang off him. Starved to the point Silver can see it in his face and how his movements are lethargic. His hair is tied back, not too long, but that is likely because of the curls. Even though this place has been hard on him, he looks… oddly approachable. _Friendly_ even. He didn't run from Silver's magic, just stood with his hands raised, trying to look non-threatening, but... not leaving. 

This is not normal behaviour for the Charnel House, and it throws Silver off enough that it stalls his panic response. Whenever Gold is gone, Silver is jumpy, anxious and grouchy too. Lack of sleep will do that to you.

"I'm fine." 

"Sure, sure, mind if I come in?" 

Now he really hadn't expected that. Gold had told him how many times he had tried to speak to people in his early days. How many of those turned into vicious fights just because he wanted to talk to someone. Gold is like him in that regard; they both need people to talk to, and they both faced problems when they tried to connect with people. He wonders if this man is another like them.

"Why?" 

"Be nice to have someone to talk to in this place, you know?" 

"You know I am usually with Gold, right?" 

He has to ask, because he doesn't want to give the guy a heart attack when Gold randomly drops down from the ceiling one day. _Because Gold will definitely do that._

"Gold?" 

"The blindfolded guy. Zero." 

The man blinks, and Silver can see that information register. Because even if Silver has no idea who half the people in here are, they all know of the blindfolded man with golden magic.

"Yikes, he's one scary bastard, he good to you?"

Yeah, this guy was clearly different to everyone else in this place. Most people would have scattered as soon as he mentioned Gold. He was scared… or rather, he was nervous at the mention of Gold. Not scared, the difference was slight, but Silver could feel it clearly. It just seemed his intention to ensure Silver was okay outweighed any fear he might have.

Silver figured that this was the kind of person Gold would like. They both seemed to care, even in this place, and if there was one thing Silver now knew about Gold? It was that he needed people. 

"Yeah, he's great. Kind too, he sings. He trains me, always makes sure I get food." 

"That must be nice." 

"Want to meet him when he gets back?" 

"Don't they, uh, wipe him?" 

"Yeah, but that's the special thing about Gold." 

Silver can't help the sharp smile at this, one he learned from Gold himself, because Silver knows that _this_ sets Gold apart. He knows it makes him dangerous. He knows it makes him a target. That it is this that makes those around watch him in fear. No matter their station. No matter their power. No matter how their superiority falls into desperation. Silver knows precisely how much those in charge abjectly despise the fact that no matter what they try, no matter how much they burn, no matter how desperately they claw with their machines and their fucked up science, no matter how they try to hurt … they'll _never_ hollow Gold out like they wish they could, which means they could never sculpt Gold into the weapon they desire. Gold would hold onto Silver with blood-stained teeth and a smile and watch The Headmaster, The White-Coats, The Guards… he'll watch them all fail and worst of all? He remembers that too. 

"What's that?"

And that is why Gold laughs.

"He _remembers._ "

And that's why Silver will always join him.

* * *

Born For This - The Score

Layton - Little Poor Me

  
  



End file.
